ROBERT BURNS 



VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES 

PUBLISHED AND IN PREPARATION 

Edited by Will D. Howe 

Arnold Stuart P. Sherman 

Browning William Lyon Phelps 

Burns William Allan Neilson 

Carlyle Bliss Perry 

Dante Alfred M. Brooks 

Defoe William P. Trent 

Dickens Richard Burton 

Emerson Samuel M. Crothers 

Hawthorne .... George E. Woodberry 

The Bible George Hodges 

Ibsen Archibald Henderson 

Lamb . . . >; . . . . Will D. Howe 

Lowell John H. Finley 

Stevenson Richard A. Rice 

Tennyson Raymond M. Alden 

Whitman . . . . . . Brand Whitlock 

Wordsworth G. T. Winchester 

Etc., Etc. 




The Nasmyth Portrait of 
Robert Burns 



ROBERT BURNS 

HOW TO KNOW HIM 



By 

WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON 

Professor of English, Harvard University 



Author of 
Essentials of Poetry, etc. 



WITH PORTRAIT 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright 1917 
The BoBBs-MERRiLt Company 



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MAY 14 1917 



PRESS OP 

BRAUNWORTH & CO. 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 

BROOKLYN. N. Y. 



^G!.A460771 



TO 

MY BROTHER 



LIST OF POEMS 

PAGE 

Address to the Deil 282 

Address to the Unco Guid 176 

Ae Fond Kiss 56 

Afton Water 116 

Auld Farmer's New- Year Morning Salutation, The . 278 

Auld Lang Syne 100 

Auld Rob Morris 121 

Bannocks o' Barley 165 

Bard's Epitaph, A 308 

Bessy and Her Spinnin'-Wheel 145 

Blue-Eyed Lassie, The 117 

Bonnie Lad that's Far Awa, The 139 

Bonnie Lesley 118 

Braw Braw Lads 140 

Ca' the Yowes 115 

Charlie He's My Darling 168 

Clarinda . 58 

Come Boat Me o'er to Charlie 163 

Comin' through the Rye 154 

Contented wi' Little 126 

Cotter's Saturday Night, The 8 

Death and Doctor Hornbook 287 

Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie, The ... 23 

De'il's Awa wi' th' Exciseman, The 154 

Deuk's Dang o'er My Daddie, The 155 

Duncan Davison 153 

Duncan Gray 152 

Elegy on Capt. Matthew Henderson ...... 298 

Epistle to a Young Friend 200 

Epistle to Davie 193 

For the Sake o' Somebody 136 

Gloomy Night, The 40 



LIST OF POEMS-Continued 

PAGE 

Go Fetch to Me a Pint o* Wine 88 

Green Grow the Rashes 123 

Had I the Wyte? 148 

Halloween 209 

Handsome Nell 20 

Highland Balou, The 151 

Highland Laddie, The 164 

Highland Mary 113 

Holy Fair, The 228 

Holy Willie's Prayer 173 

How Lang and Dreary 138 

I Hae a Wife 59 

I Hae Been at Crookieden 167 

I'm Owre Young to Marry Yet 143 

It Was a' for Our Rightfu' King , 162 

John Anderson, My Jo 146 

Jolly Beggars, The 241 

Kenmure's On and Awa 165 

Lassie wi' the Lint- White Locks 119 

Last May a Braw Wooer 135 

Lea-Rig, The 120 

MacPherson's Farewell 150 

Man's a Man for a' that, A 158 

Mary Morison 28 

Montgomerie's Peggy 120 

My Father Was a Farmer . 126 

My Heart's in the Highlands 140 

My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose 102 

My Love She's but a Lassie Yet 144 

My Nannie O 29 

My Nannie's Awa 57 

My Wife's a Winsome Wee Thing ...... 108 

O for Ane an' Twenty, Tam ! 129 

O Merry Hae I Been 148 

O This Is No My Ain Lassie 107 



LIST OF POEMS-Continucd 

PAGE 

O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast 123 

Of a' the Airts 106 

On a Scotch Bard, Gone to the West Indies ... 42 

On John Dove, Innkeeper 205 

Open the Door to Me, 0! 137 

Poet's Welcome to His Love-Begotten Daughter, The 33 

Poor Mailie's Elegy 26 

Poortith Cauld 107 

Prayer in the Prospect of Death, A 32 

Rantin' Dog the Daddie o't, The 134 

Rigs o' Barley, The 30 

Scotch Drink 301 

Scots, Wha Hae 160 

Simmer's a Pleasant Time 131 

Tam Glen 133 

Tarn o* Shanter 257 

Tam Samson's Elegy 294 

There Was a Lad 125 

There'll Never Be Peace till Jamie Comes Hame . . 166 

To a Haggis 306 

^To a Louse 274 

To a Mountain Daisy 276 

To a Mouse 272 

To Daunton Me 142 

To Mary in Heaven 114 

To the Rev. John McMath 181 

Twa Dogs, The 219 

Wandering Willie 138 

Weary Pund o' Tow, The 147 

Wha Is that at My Bower Door? 156 

What Can a Young Lassie 142 

Whistle, and I'll Come to Ye, My Lad 132 

Will Ye Go to the Indies, My Mary? 40 

Willie Brew*d a Peck o' Maut 238 

Willie's Wife .156 

Ye Banks and Braes (two versions) 130 

Yestreen I Had a Pint o* Wine 104 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Biography 1 

1. Alio way, Mount Oliphant, and Lochlea . 3 

2. Mossgiel 31 

3. Edinburgh 44 

4. Ellisland 58 

5. Dumfries 62 

II Inheritance: Language and Literature . . 69 

HI Burns and Scottish Song 90 

W Satires and Epistles 171 

V Descriptive and Narrative Poetry .... 206 

VI Conclusion 310 

Index 325 



ROBERT BURNS 



BURNS 

CHAPTER I 

BIOGRAPHY 

«Tr HAVE not the most distant pretence to 
1 what the pye-coated guardians of Escutch- 
eons call a Gentleman. When at Edinburgh last 
winter, I got acquainted at the Herald's office; 
and looking thro' the granary of honors, I there 
found almost every name in the kingdom; but 

for me, 

My ancient but ignoble blood 
Has crept thro* scoundrels since the flood. 

Gules, purpure, argent, etc., quite disowned me. 
My forefathers rented land of the famous, noble 
Keiths of Marshal, and had the honor to share 
their fate. I do not use the word *honor' with 
any reference to political principles : loyal and dis- 
loyal I take to be merely relative terms in that 
ancient and formidable court known in this coun- 
try by the name of *club-law.' Those who dare 
welcome Ruin and shake hands with Infamy, for 

1 



2 BURNS 

what they believe sincerely to be the cause of their 
God or their King, are — as Mark Antony in 
Shakspear says of Brutus and Cassius — 'honor- 
able men.' I mention this circumstance because it 
threw my Father on the world at large; where, 
after many years' wanderings and sojournings, 
he picked up a pretty large quantity of observa- 
tion and experience, to which I am indebted for 
most of my pretensions to Wisdom. I have met 
with few who understood Men, their manners 
and their ways, equal to him; but stubborn, un- 
gainly Integrity, and headlong, ungovernable 
Irascibility, are disqualifying circumstances; con- 
sequently, I was born a very poor man's son." 

*'You can now. Sir, form a pretty near guess of 
what sort of Wight he is, whom for some time 
you have honored with your correspondence. 
That Whim and Fancy, keen sensibility and riot- 
ous passions, may still make him zig-zag in his 
future path of life is very probable; but, come 
what will, I shall answer for him — the most de- 
terminate integrity and honor [shall ever charac- 
terise him] ; and though his evil star should again 
blaze in his meridian with tenfold more direful 
influence, he may reluctantly tax friendship with 
pity, but no more." 



BIOGRAPHY 3 

These two paragraphs form respectively the be- 
ginning and the end of a long autobiographical 
letter written by Robert Burns to Doctor John 
Moore, physician and novelist. At the time they 
were composed, the poet had just returned to his 
native county after the triumphant season in 
Edinburgh that formed the climax of his career. 
But no detailed knowledge of circumstances is 
necessary to rouse interest in a man who wrote 
like that. You may be offended by the self-con- 
sciousness and the swagger, or you may be 
charmed by the frankness and dash, but you can 
not remain indififerent. Burns had many moods 
besides those reflected in these sentences, but here 
we can see as vividly as in any of his poetry the 
fundamental characteristics of the man — sensi- 
tive, passionate, independent, and as proud as 
Lucifer — whose life and work are the subject of 
this volume. 

I. Alloway, Mount Oliphant, and Lochlea 

William Burnes, the father of the poet, came 
of a family of farmers and gardeners in the 
county of Kincardine, on the east coast of Scot- 
land. At the age of twenty-seven, he left his 
native district for the south; and when Robert, 



4 BURNS 

his eldest child, was born on January 25, 1759, 
William was employed as gardener to the provost 
of Ayr. He had besides leased some seven acres 
of land, of which he planned to make a nursery 
and market-garden, in the neighboring parish of 
Alloway; and there near the Brig o' Doon built 
with his own hands the clay cottage now known 
to literary pilgrims as the birthplace of Bums. 
His wife, Agnes Brown, the daughter of an Ayr- 
shire farmer, bore him, besides Robert, three sons 
and three daughters. In order to keep his sons at 
home instead of sending them out as farm-labor- 
ers, the elder Burnes rented in 1766 the farm of 
Mount Oliphant, and stocked it on borrowed 
money. The venture did not prosper, and on a 
change of landlords the family fell into the hands 
of a merciless agent, whose bullying the poet later 
avenged by the portrait of the factor in The 
Twa Dogs. 

I've noticed, on our Laird's court-day, — 
And mony a time my heart's been wae, — 
Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash, 
How they maun thole a factor's snash ; 
He'll stamp and threaten, curse and swear, 
He'll apprehend them, poind their gear ; 
While they maun stan', wi' aspect humble, 
And hear it a', and fear and tremble! 



BIOGRAPHY 5 

In 1777 Mount Oliphant was exchanged for 
the farm of Lochlea, about ten miles away, and 
here William Burnes labored for the rest of his 
life. The farm was poor, and with all he could 
do it was hard to keep his head above water. His 
health was failing, he was harassed with debts, 
and in 1784 in the midst of a lawsuit about his 
lease, he died. 

In spite of his struggle for a bare subsistence, 
the elder Burnes had not neglected the education 
of his children. Before he was six, Robert was 
sent to a small school at AUoway Mill, and soon 
after his father joined with a few neighbors to 
engage a young man named John Murdoch to 
teach their children in a room in the village. 
This arrangement continued for two years and a 
half, when, Murdoch having been called else- 
where, the father undertook the task of educa- 
tion himself. The regular instruction was con- 
fined chiefly to the long winter evenings, but quite 
as important as this was the intercourse between 
father and sons as they went about their work. 

"My father," says the poet's brother Gilbert, 
"was for some time almost the only companion 
we had. He conversed familiarly on all subjects 



6 BURNS 

with us, as if we had been men; and was at great 
pains, as we accompanied him in the labours of 
the farm, to lead the conversation to such subjects 
as might tend to increase our knowledge, or con- 
firm our virtuous habits. He borrowed Salmon^s 
Geographical Grammar for us, and endeavoured 
to make us acquainted with the situation and his- 
tory of the different countries in the world; 
while, from a book-society in Ayr, he procured 
for us Derham's Physics and Astro-Theology, 
and Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation, to 
give us some idea of astronomy and natural his- 
tory. Robert read all these books with an avidity 
and industry scarcely to be equalled. My father 
had been a subscriber to Stackhouse's History of 
the Bible . . . ; from this Robert collected a 
competent knowledge of ancient history; for no 
book was so voluminous as to slacken his indus- 
try, or so antiquated as to dampen his researches. 
A brother of my mother, who had lived with us 
some time, and had learned some arithmetic by 
our winter evening's candle, went into a book- 
seller's shop in Ayr to purchase the Ready Reck- 
oner, or Tradesman's Sure Guide, and a book to 
teach him to write letters. Luckily, in place of 
the Complete Letter-Writer, he got by mistake a 



BIOGRAPHY 7 

small collection of letters by the most eminent 
writers, with a few sensible directions for attain- 
ing an easy epistolary style. This book was to 
Robert of the greatest consequence. It inspired 
him with a strong desire to excel in letter-writing, 
while it furnished him with models by some of 
the first writers in our language." 

Interesting as are the details as to the anti- 
quated manuals from which Burns gathered his 
general information, it is more important to note 
the more personal implications in this account. 
Respect for learning has long been wide-spread 
among the peasantry of Scotland, but it is evident 
that William Burnes was intellectually far above 
the average of his class. The schoolmaster Mur- 
doch has left a portrait of him in which he not 
only extols his virtues as a man but emphasizes 
his zest for things of the mind, and states that 
"he spoke the English language with more propri- 
ety — both with respect to diction and pronuncia- 
tion — than any man I ever knew, with no greater 
advantages." Though tender and affectionate, he 
seems to have inspired both wife and children 
with a reverence amounting to awe, and he struck 
strangers as reserved and austere. He recog- 



8 BURNS 

nized in Robert traces of extraordinary gifts, but 
he did not hide from him the fact that his son's 
temperament gave him anxiety for his future. 
Mrs. Burnes was a devoted wife and mother, by 
no means her husband's intellectual equal, but vi- 
vacious and quick-tempered, with a memory 
stored with the song and legend of the country- 
side. Other details can be filled in from the poet's 
own picture of his father's household as given 
with little or no idealization in The Cotter's Sat- 
urday Night. 

THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT 

My lov'd, my honour'd, much respected friend ! 

No mercenary bard his homage pays : 
With honest pride I scorn each selfish end, 

My dearest meed a friend's esteem and praise : 

To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, 
The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene ; 

The native feelings strong, the guileless ways ; 
What Aiken in a cottage would have been — 
Ah ! tho' his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween. 

wail November chill blaws loud wi' angry sough ; 

The short'ning winter-day is near a close ; 
The miry beasts retreating f rae the pleugh ; 
The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose : 
The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes, 



BIOGRAPHY 



9 



This night his weekly moil is at an end, 

Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, 
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, 
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend. 



At length his lonely cot appears in view, 

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ; 
Th* expectant wee-things, toddlin', stacher through 

To meet their dad, wi' flichterin' noise an' glee. 

His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonnilie, 
His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile, 

The lisping infant prattling on his knee, 
Does a' his weary kiaugh and care beguile, 
An' makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil. 



stagger 

fluttering 

fire 



worry 



Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, Soon 

At service out, amang the farmers roun' ; 

Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin drive, heedful run 

A cannie errand to a neibor town : <iuiet 

Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown. 

In youthfu' bloom,- love sparkling in he e'e, «ye 

Comes hame, perhaps to shew a braw new gown, fi"« 

Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee, hard-won wages 
To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. 



With joy unfeign'd brothers and sisters meet. 
An' each for other's weelf arg kindly spiers : 

The social hours, swif t-wing'd, unnoticed fleet ; 
Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears ; 
The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years ; 



asks 



wonders 



10 



BURNS 



Anticipation forward points the view. 

The mother, wi' her needle an' her sheers, 
Makes old clothes Gars auld claes look amaist as weel 's the new ; 
The father mixes a' wi' admonition due. 

Their master's an' their mistress's command 
The younkers a' are warned to obey ; 

An' mind their labours wi' an eydent hand, 
An' ne'er, tho' out o' sight, to jauk or play: 
'And O 1 be sure to fear the Lord alway, 

An' mind your duty, duly, morn an' night! 
Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray, 

Implore His counsel and assisting might : 
They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright!' 

But hark ! a rap comes gently to the door ; 

Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same, 
Tells how a neibor lad cam o'er the moor. 

To do some errands, and convoy her hame. 

The wily mother sees the conscious flame 
Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek ; 

Wi* heart-struck anxious care, inquires his name, 
While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak ; 
Weel pleased the mother hears it's nae wild worthless rake. 



Wi' kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben ; 

A strappin' youth ; he takes the mother's eye ; 
Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en ; 

The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye. 

The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, 



BIOGRAPHY 11 

But blate and laithfu', scarce can weel behave; shy, bashful 

The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy 
What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave; 
Weel-pleased to think her bairn's respected like the lave. child, rest 

O happy love ! where love like this is found ; 

O heart-felt raptures ! bliss beyond compare ! 
I've paced much this weary mortal round, 

And sage experience bids me this declare : — 

'If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare, 
One cordial in this melancholy vale, 

'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair 
In other's arms breathe out the tender tale. 
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale/ 

Is there, in human form, that bears a heart — 

A wretch, a villain, lost to love and truth — 
That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art. 

Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth? 

Curse on his perjur'd arts, dissembling, smooth I 
Are honour, virtue, conscience, all exil'd ? 

Is there no pity, no relenting ruth. 
Points to the parents fondling o'er their child ? 
Then paints the ruin'd maid, and their distraction wild? 

But now the supper crowns their simple board. 

The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia's food : wholesome 

The sowpe their only hawkie does afford, milk, cow 

That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood ; beyond, parti- 

tion, cud 
The dame brings forth in compHmental mood, 



12 



BURNS 



well-saved cheese, 
strong 



twelve-month, 
flax, flower 



To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell ; 

And aft he's prest, and aft he ca's it good ; 
The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell 
How 'twas a towmond auld sin' lint was i' the bell. 



family-Bible 



gray hair on tem- 
ples 



chooses 



The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face 

They round the ingle form a circle wide ; 
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace. 

The big ha'-bible, ance his father's pride : 

His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, 
His lyart haff ets wearing thin an* bare ; 

Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide- 
He wales a portion with judicious care. 
And 'Let us worship God !' he says with solemn air. 



fans 



No, have 



They chant their artless notes in simple guise ; 

They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim 
Perhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise, 

Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name ; 

Or noble Elgin beets the heav'nward flame, 
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays : 

Compared with these, Italian trills are tame ; 
The tickled ears no heartfelt raptures raise; 
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise. 



The priest-like father reads the sacred page, 
How Abram was the friend of God on high ; 

Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage 
With Amalek's ungracious progeny; 
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie 



BIOGRAPHY 13 

Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire ; 

Or Job's pathetic plaint, and waiHng cry; 
Or rapt Isaiah's wild seraphic fire ; 
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. 

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme, 

How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed ; 
How He who bore in Heaven the second name 

Had not on earth whereon to lay His head; 

How His first followers and servants sped; 
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land : 

How he, who lone in Patmos banished. 
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, 
And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounced by Heaven's 
command. 

Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King 
The saint, the father, and the husband prays : 
- Hope 'springs exulting on triumphant wing* 
That thus they all shall meet in future days : 
There ever bask in uncreated rays, 
No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear. 

Together hymning their Creator's praise. 
In such society, yet still more dear ; 
While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere. 

Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride. 

In all the pomp of method and of art. 
When men display to congregations wide 

Devotion's every grace, except the heart ! 

The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert, 



14 BURNS 

The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole; 

But haply, in some cottage far apart. 
May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul ; 
And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enrol. 

Then homeward all take off their several way ; 

The youngling cottagers retire to rest : 
The parent-pair their secret homage pay, 

And proffer up to Heav'n the warm request, 

That He who stills the raven's clamorous nest. 
And decks the lily fair in flowery pride. 

Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best. 
For them and for their little ones provide ; 
But chiefly in their hearts with grace divine pt'eside. 

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, 
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad : 

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 
*An honest man's the noblest work of God ;' 
And certes, in fair Virtue's heavenly road, 

The cottage leaves the palace far behind ; 
What is a lordling's pomp ? a cumbrous load, 

Disguising oft the wretch of human kind, 
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin'd 1 

O Scotia ! my dear, my native soil I 

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent I 
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil 

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content ! 

And O may Heaven their simple lives prevent 



BIOGRAPHY 15 

From luxury's contagion, weak and vile; 

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, 
A virtuous populace may rise the while, 
And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle. 

O Thou 1 who poured the patriotic tide 

That streamed thro' Wallace's undaunted heart, 
Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride, 

Or nobly die — the second glorious part, 

(The patriot's God, peculiarly thou art, 
His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!) 

O never, never, Scotia's realm desert ; 
But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard, 
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard ! 

No less impressive than that of his father is the 
intellectual hunger of the future poet himself. 
We have had Gilbert's testimony to the eagerness 
with which he devoured such books as came 
within his reach, and the use he made of his later 
fragments of schooling points the same way. He 
had a quarter at the parish school of Dalrymple 
when he was thirteen; and in the following sum- 
mer he attended the school at Ayr under his 
former Alloway instructor. Murdoch's own ac- 
count of these three weeks gives an idea of 
Bums's quickness of apprehension; and the style 
of it is worth noting with reference to the char- 
acteristics of the poet's own prose. 



16 BURNS 

"In 1773," says Murdoch, "Robert Burns came 
to board and lodge with me, for the purpose of 
revising EngHsh grammar, etc., that he might be 
better quaHfied to instruct his brothers and sisters 
at home. He was now with me day and night, in 
school, at all meals, and in all my walks. At the 
end of one week, I told him as he was now pretty 
much master of the parts of speech, etc., I should 
like to teach him something of French pronuncia- 
tion, that when he should meet with the name of 
a French town, ship, officer, or the like, in the 
newspapers, he might be able to pronounce it 
something like a French word. Robert was glad 
to hear this proposal, and immediately we at- 
tacked the French with great courage. 

"Now there was little else to be heard but the 
declension of nouns, the conjugation of verbs, 
etc. When walking together, and even at meals, 
I was constantly telling him the names of differ- 
ent objects, as they presented themselves. In 
French; so that he was hourly laying in a stock 
of words, and sometimes little phrases. In short, 
he took such pleasure in learning, and I in teach- 
ing, that it was difficult to say which of the two 
was most zealous in the business ; and about the 
end of the second week of our study of the 



BIOGRAPHY 17 

French, we began to read a little of the Advent 
tures of Telemachus in Fenelon's own words. 

''But now the plains of Mount Oliphant began 
to whiten, and Robert was summoned to relin- 
quish the pleasing scenes that surrounded the 
grotto of Calypso, and armed with a sickle, to 
seek glory by signalising himself in the fields of 
Ceres; and so he did, for although but about fif- 
teen, I was told that he performed the work of a 
man." 

The record of Burns' s school-days is completed 
by the mention of a sojourn, probably in the sum- 
mer of 1775, in his mother's parish of Kirkos- 
wald. Hither he went to study mathematics and 
surveying under a teacher of local note, and, in 
spite of the convivial attractions of a smuggling 
village, seems to have made progress in his geom- 
etry till his head was turned by a girl who lived 
next door to the school. 

So far the education gained by Burns from his 
schoolmasters and his father had been almost 
exclusively moral and intellectual. It was in less 
formal ways that his imagination was fed. From 
his mother he had heard from infancy the ballads, 
legends, and songs that were traditionary among 



18 BURNS 

the peasantry; and the influence of these was re- 
enforced by a certain Betty Davidson, an unfor- 
tunate relative of his mother's to whom the 
family gave shelter for a time. 

"In my infant and boyish days, too," he writes 
in the letter to Doctor Moore already quoted, "I 
owed much to an old maid of my mother's, re- 
markable for her ignorance, credulity, and su- 
perstition. She had, I suppose, the largest 
collection in the country, of tales and songs con- 
cerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, 
warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead- 
lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, enchanted 
towers, giants, dragons, and other trumpery. 
This cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy; but had 
so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this 
hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep 
a sharp look-out in suspicious places ; and though 
nobody can be more sceptical in these matters 
than I, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy 
to shake off these idle terrors." 

His private reading also contained much that 
must have stimulated his imagination and broad- 
ened his interests. It began with a Life of Han- 



BIOGRAPHY 19 

nibal, and Hamilton's modernized version of the 
History of Sir William Wallace, which last, he 
says, with the touch of flamboyancy that often 
recurs in his style, "poured a Scottish prejudice 
in my veins, which will boil along there till the 
flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest." By the 
time he was eighteen he had, in addition to books 
already mentioned, become acquainted with 
Shakespeare, Pope (including the translation of 
Homer), Thomson, Shenstone, Allan Ramsay, 
and a Select Collection of Songs, Scotch and 
English; with the Spectator, the Pantheon, 
Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, 
Sterne, and Henry Mackenzie. To these must be 
added some books on farming and gardening, a 
good deal of theology, and, of course, the Bible. 
The pursuing of intellectual interests such as 
are implied in this list is the more significant 
when we remember that it was carried on in the 
scanty leisure of a life of labor so severe that it 
all but broke the poet's health, and probably left 
permanent marks on his physique. Yet he had 
energy left for still other avocations. It was 
when he was no more than fifteen that he first 
experienced the twin passions that came to domi- 
nate his life, love and song. The girl who was 



20 BURNS 

the occasion was his partner in the harvest field, 
Nelly Kilpatrick ; the song he addressed to her is 
the following: 

HANDSOME NELL 

O, once I lov'd a bonnie lass. 

Aye, and I love her still, 
And whilst that virtue warms my breast 

I'll love my handsome Nell. 

As bonnie lasses I hae seen, 

And mony full as braw, 
But for a modest grace fu' m.ien 

The like I never saw. 

A bonnie lass, I will confess, 

Is pleasant to the e'e, 
But without some better qualities 

She's no a lass for me. 

But Nelly's looks are blithe and sweet. 

And what is best of a', 
Her reputation is complete, 

And fair without a flaw. 

She dresses aye sae clean and neat. 

Both decent and genteel ; 
And then there's something in her gait 

Gars ony dress look weel. 

A gaudy dress and gentle air 

May slightly touch the heart, 
But it's innocence and modesty 

That polishes the dart. 



BIOGRAPHY 21 

*Tis this in Nelly pleases me, 

*Tis this enchants my soul ! 
For absolutely in my breast 

She reigns without control. 

Since there may still be readers who suppose 
that Burns was a mere unsophisticated singer, 
without power of self-criticism, it may be as well 
to insert here a passage from a Commonplace 
Book written in 1783, ten years after the com- 
position of the song. 

Criticism on the Foregoing Song 

"Lest my works should be thought below Criti- 
cism ; or meet with a Critic who, perhaps, will not 
look on them with so candid and favorable an 
eye ; I am determined to criticise them myself. 

"The first distich of the first stanza is quite too 
much in the flimsy strain of our ordinary street 
ballads ; and on the other hand, the second distich 
is too much in the other extreme. The expression 
Is a little awkward, and the sentiment too serious. 
Stanza the second I am well pleased with ; and I 
think it conveys a fine idea of that amiable part 
of the Sex — the agreeables, or what in our Scotch 
dialect we call a sweet sonsy Lass. The third 
Stanza has a little of the flimsy turn in it ; and the 



22 BURNS 

third line has rather too serious a cast. The 
fourth Stanza is a very indifferent one; the first 
line is, indeed, all in the strain of the second 
Stanza, but the rest is mostly an expletive. The 
thoughts in the fifth Stanza come fairly up to my 
favorite idea [of] a sweet sonsy Lass. The last 
line, however, halts a little. The same sentiments 
are kept up with equal spirit and tenderness in 
the sixth Stanza, but the second and fourth lines 
ending with short syllables hurts the whole. The 
seventh Stanza has several minute faults; but I 
remember I composed it in a wild enthusiasm of 
passion, and to this hour I never recollect it but 
my heart melts, and my blood sallies at the re- 
membrance.'* 

In spite of the early start in poetry given him 
by Nelly Kilpatrick, he did not produce more than 
a few pieces of permanent value during the next 
ten years. He did, however, go on developing 
and branching out in his social activities, in spite 
of the depressing grind of the farm. He attended 
a dancing school (much against his father's will), 
helped to establish a "Bachelors' Club" for de- 
bating, and found time for further love-affairs. 
That with Ellison Begbie, celebrated by him in 



BIOGRAPHY 23 

The Lass of Cessnock Banks, he took very seri- 
ously, and he proposed marriage to the girl in 
some portentously solemn epistles which remain 
to us as the earliest examples of his prose. In 
order to put himself in a position to marry, he 
determined to learn the trade of flax-dressing; 
and though Ellison refused him, he went to the 
neighboring seaport of Irvine to carry out his 
purpose in the summer of 1781. The flax-dress- 
ing experiment ended disastrously with a fire 
which burned the workshop, and Burns returned 
penniless to the farm. The poems written about 
this time express profound melancholy, a mood 
natural enough in the circumstances, and aggra- 
vated by his poor nervous and physical condition. 
^ But his spirit could not remain permanently 
depressed, and shortly after his return to Lochlea, 
a trifling accident to a ewe he had bought 
prompted him to the following delightful and 
characteristic production. 

THE DEATH AND DYING WORDS OF POOR 
MAILIE, THE AUTHOR'S ONLY PET YOWE 

As Mailie, an' her lambs theglther, together 

Was ae day nibbling on the tether, one 

Upon her cloot she coost a hitch, Iioof, looped 

An' owre she warsled in the ditch ; over, floundered 



24 



BURNS 



There, groaning, dying, she did lie, 
When Hughoc he cam doytin by. 

Wi glowrin' een, an' lifted nan's, 
Poor Hughoc like a statue stan's ; 
He saw her days were near-hand ended, 
But wae's my heart ! he could na mend it ! 
He gaped wide, but naething spak ; 
At length poor Mailie silence brak : — 



'O thou, whase lamentable face 
Appears to mourn my woefu' case ! 
My dying words attentive hear, 
An* bear them to my Master dear. 

*Tell him, if e'er again he keep 
As muckle gear as buy a sheep, — 
O bid him never tie them mair 
Wi* wicked strings o* hemp or hair I 
But ca' them out to park or hill, 
An* let them wander at their will ; 
So may his flock increase, an' grow 
To scores o* lambs, an* packs o' woo' I 

'Tell him he was a Master kin', 
An' aye was guid to me an* mine ; 
An' now my dying charge I gie him, 
My helpless lambs, I trust them wi' him. 

'O bid him save their harmless lives 
Frae dogs, an' tods, an' butchers' knives 1 
But gie them guid cow-milk their fill, 
Till they be fit to fend themsel : 
An' tent them duly, e'en an' morn, 
Wi' teats o' hay an* ripps o' corn. 



BIOGRAPHY 



25 



*An' may they never learn the gates 
Of ither vile v^anrestfu' pets — 
To slink thro' slaps, an' reave an' steal, 
At stacks o' pease, or stocks o' kail. 
So may they, like their great forbears, 
For mony a year come thro' the shears ; 
So wives will gie them bits o' bread, 
An' bairns greet for them when they're dead. 

*My poor tup-lamb, my son an' heir, 
O bid him breed him up wi' care ! 
An', if he live to be a beast, 
To pit some havins in his breast ! 
An' warn him, what I winna name. 
To stay content wi' yowes at hame ; 
An' no to rin an' wear his cloots. 
Like ither menseless graceless brutes. 

*An neist my yowie, silly thing, 
Gude keep thee f rae a tether string I 

may thou ne'er forgather up 
Wi' ony blastit moorland tup ; 

But ay keep mind to moop an' mell, 
Wi' sheep o' credit like thysel ! 

*And now, my bairns, wi' my last breath 

1 lea'e my blessin' wi' you baith ; 

An' when you think upo' your mither. 
Mind to be kind to ane anither. 

'Now, honest Hughoc, dinna fail 
To tell my master a' my tale ; 
An' bid him burn this cursed tether ; 
An', for thy pains, thou'se get my blether/ 



ways 

restless 

holes in fences 

plants 



weep 



put, behavior 

will not 

ewes 

hoofs 

unmannerly 

next 

make friends 

nibble, meddle 



bladder 



This said, poor Mailie turn'd her head. 
An' closed her een amang the dead I 



eyes 



26 



BURNS 



POOR MAILIE'S ELEGY 

Lament in rhyme, lament In prose, 

Wi' saut tears tricklin' down your nose, 

Our bardie's fate is at a close, 

Past a' remead ; 
The last sad cape-stane of his woes — 

Poor Mailie's dead! 

It's no the loss o' warl's gear 

That could sae bitter draw the tear, 

Or mak our bardie, dowie, wear 

The mourning weed ; 
He's lost a friend and neibor dear 
In Mailie dead. 

Thro' a' the toun she trotted by him ; 
A lang half-mile she could descry him ; 
Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him, 

She ran wi' speed : 
A friend mair faithfu' ne'er cam nigh him 

Than Mailie dead. 



I wat she was a sheep o' sense, 
An' could behave hersel wi' mense; 
I'll say't, she never brak a fence 

Thro' thievish greed. 
Our bardie, lanely, keeps the spence 

Sin' Mailie's dead. 



BIOGRAPHY 



27 



Or, if he wanders up the howe, 

Her living image in her yowe 

Comes bleating to him, owre the knowe, 

For bits o' bread, 
An* down the briny pearls rowe 

For Mailie dead. 



glen 

ewe-lamb 
knoll 

roll 



She was nae get o' moorland tups, 

Wi' tawted ket, an* hairy hips; 

For her forbears were brought in ships 

Frae 'yont the Tweed; 
A bonnier fleesh ne'er cross'd the clips 

Than Mailie's, dead. 



issue 

matted fleece 



fleece, shears 



Wae worth the man wha first did shape 
That vile wanchancie thing — a rape I 
It maks guid fellows girn an' gape, 

Wi' chokin' dread; 
An* Robin's bonnet wave wi* crape 

For Mailie dead. 



Woe to 

dangerous 

growl 



O a* ye bards on bonnie Doon ! 

An' wha on Ayr your chanters tune ! 

Come, join the melancholious croon 

O' Robin's reed ; 
His heart will never get aboon 1 

His Mailie's dead! 

How long he continued to mourn for Ellison 
Begbie, it is hard to say ; but the three following 
songs, inspired, it would seem, by three different 
girls, testify at once to his power of recuperation 



bagpipes 



rejoice 



28 



BURNS 



and the rapid maturing of his talent. All seem 
to have been written between the date of his re- 
turn from Irvine and the death of his father. 



bear, struggle 



MARY MORISON 

O Mary, at thy window be, 

It is the wish'd, the trysted hour I 

Those smiles and glances let me see, 
That make the miser's treasure poor : 
How blythely wad I bide the stoure, 

A weary slave frae sun to sun, 
Could I the rich reward secure. 

The lovely Mary Morison. 



Last night 
went 



fine 

the other 



Yestreen, when to the trembling string 
The dance gaed thro* the lighted ha*, 

To thee my fancy took its wing, 
I sat, but neither heard nor saw : 
Tho* this was fair, and that was braw, 

And yon the toast of a* the town, 
I sigh*d, and said amang them a*, 

*Ye are na Mary Morison.* 



fault 



O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, 

Wha for thy sake wad gladly die? 
Or canst thou break that heart of his, 

Whase only faut is loving thee? 

If love for love thou wilt na gie. 
At least be pity to me shown I 

A thought ungentle canna be 
The thought o' Mary Morison. 



BIOGRAPHY 29 



MY NANNIE O 

Behind yon hills where Lugar flows, 

'Mang moors an' mosses many, O, 
The wintry sun the day has clos'd. 

And I'll awa' to Nannie, O. 

The westlin wind blaws loud an' shill, western, keen 

The night's baith mirk and rainy, O; ^°^^ '^^'^ 

But I'll get my plaid, an' out I'll steal, 

An' owre the hill to Nannie, O. ®^*' 

My Nannie's charming, sweet, an* young: 

Nae artfu* wiles to win ye, O: 
May ill befa' the flattering tongue 

That wad beguile my Nannie, O. 

Her face is fair, her heart is true, 

As spotless as she's bonnie, O : 
The opening gowan, wat wi' dew, datsy, wet 

Nae purer is than Nannie, O. 

A country lad is my degree. 

An' few there be that ken me, O ; 
But what care I how few they be, 

I'm welcome aye to Nannie, O. 



My riches a's my penny-fee, 
An' I maun guide it cannie, O ; 

But warl's gear ne'er troubles me. 
My thoughts are a'— -my Nannie, O. 



wages 

carefully 
lucre 



30 



BURNS 



cows 
holds 



Our auld guidman delights to view 
His sheep an' kye thrive bonnie, O. 

But I'm as blythe that hauds his pleugh, 
An' has nae care but Nannie, O. 



reck not 



Come weel, come woe, I care na by, 
I'll tak what Heav'n will send me, O: 

Nae ither care in life have I, 
But live, an' love my Nannie, O. 



THE RIGS O' BARLEY 



ridges 

took my way 
careless 



It was upon a Lammas night, 

When corn rigs are bonnie, 
Beneath the moon's unclouded light 

I held awa to Annie : 
The time flew by wi' tentless heed, 

Till, 'tween the late and early, 
Wi* sma* persuasion she agreed 

To see me thro' the barley. 



knew, own 



The sky was blue, the wind was still. 

The moon was shining clearly ; 
I set her down wi' right good will 

Amang the rigs o' barley ; 
I kent her heart was a' my ain ; 

I loved her most sincerely; 
I kissed her owre and owre again 

Amang the rigs o' barley. 



BIOGRAPHY 31 

I locked her in my fond embrace; 

Her heart was beating rarely; 
My blessings on that happy place, 

Amang the rigs o' barley 1 
But by the moon and stars so bright, 

That shone that hour so clearly, 
She aye shall bless that happy night 

Amang the rigs o' barley. 

I hae been blythe wi' comrades dear; 

I hae been merry drinking; 
I hae been joyfu' gatherin' gear; property 

I hae been happy thinking: 
But a' the pleasures e'er I saw, 

Tho* three times doubled fairly. 
That happy night was worth them a', 

Amang the rigs o' barley. 

Corn rigs, an' barley rigs. 

An' corn rigs are bonnie: 
I'll ne'er forget that happy night, 

Amang the rigs wi' Annie. 

2. Mossglel 

On the death of their father, Robert and Gil- 
bert Burns moved with the family to the farm of 
Mossgiel in the next parish of Mauchline. By 
putting in a claim for arrears of wages, they suc- 
ceeded in drawing enough from the wreck of 



32 BURNS 

their father's estate to supply a scanty stock for 
the new venture. The records of the first summer 
show the poet in anything but a happy frame of 
mind. His health was miserable; and the loosen- 
ing of his moral principles, which he ascribes to 
the influence of a young sailor he had met at 
Irvine, bore fruit in the birth to him of an illegiti- 
mate daughter by a servant girl, Elizabeth Paton. 
The verses which carry allusion to this affair are 
illuminating for his character. One group is 
devout and repentant; the other marked some- 
times by cynical bravado, sometimes by a note of 
exultation. Both may be regarded as genuine 
enough expressions of moods which alternated 
throughout his life, and which corresponded to 
conflicting sides of his nature. Here is a typical 
example of the former: 

A PRAYER IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH 

O Thou unknown Almighty Cause 

Of all my hope and fear ! 
In whose dread presence ere an hour, 

Perhaps I must appear ! 

If I have wander'd in those paths 

Of life I ought to shun ; 
As something, loudly in my breast, 

Remonstrates I have done : 



BIOGRAPHY 33 

Thou know'st that Thou hast formed me 

With passions wild and strong ; 
And list'ning to their witching voice 

Has often led me wrong. 

Where human weakness has come short, 

Or frailty stept aside, 
Do thou, All-Good ! for such Thou art. 

In shades of darkness hide. 

Where with intention I have err'd. 

No other plea I have, 
But thou art good ; and Goodness still 

Delighteth to forgive. 

In his Epistle to John Rankine, with a some- 
what hard and heartless humor, he braves out the 
aftair ; in the following Welcome he treats it with 
a tender pride, as sincere as his remorse: 



THE POET'S WELCOME TO HIS LOVE- 
BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER 

Thou's welcome, wean! Mishanter fa' me, child! Misfor- 

tune befall 
If ought of thee, or of thy mammy. 

Shall ever daunton me, or awe me, 

My sweet wee lady, 
Or if I blush when thou shalt ca' me 

Tit-ta or daddy. 



34 



BURNS 



country gossip 

more 

tattle 

feeble 

give one annoy- 
ance 



choir 



What tho* they ca' me fornicator, 
An' tease my name in kintra clatter : 
The mair they talk I'm kent the better, 

E'en let them clash ; 
An auld wife's tongue's a feckless matter 

To gie ane fash. 

Welcome, my bonnie, sweet wee dochter — 
Tho' ye come here a wee unsought for, 
An' tho* your comin' I hae fought for 

Baith kirk an' queir ; 
Yet, by my faith, ye're no unwrought for ! 

That I shall swear ! 



not all lost 
askew 



a small coin 



Sweet fruit o' mony a merry dint, 

My funny toil is no a' tint, 

Tho* thou came to the warl' asklent. 

Which fools may scoff at; 
In my last plack thy part's be in't — 

The better half o't. 



worse off 

finely, comfortably 



pet 



The* I should be the waur bested, 
Thou's be as braw an* bienly clad. 
An* thy young years as nicely bred 

Wi* education. 
As ony brat o' wedlock's bed 

In a' thy station. 

Wee image of my bonnie Betty, 
As fatherly I kiss and daut thee. 
As dear an* near my heart I set thee 

Wi* as guid will, 
As a* the priests had seen me get thee 

That*s out o* hell. 



BIOGRAPHY 35 

Gude grant that thou may aye inherit God 

Thy mither's looks and gracefu' merit, 
An' thy poor worthless daddy's spirit, 

Without his f ailins ; 
'Twill please me mair to see thee heir it, 

Than stockit mailins. ^arms 

An' if thou be what I wad hae thee, would have 

An' tak the counsel I shall gie thee, 
ril never rue my trouble wi' thee — 

The cost nor shame o't — 
But be a loving father to thee, 

And brag the name o't. 

At Mossgiel the Burns family was no more 
successful than in either of its previous farms. 
Bad seed and bad weather gave two poor har- 
vests, and by the summer of 1786 the poet's 
financial condition was again approaching des- 
peration. His situation was made still more em- 
barrassing by the consequences of another of his 
amours. Shortly after moving to the parish of 
Mauchline he had fallen in love with Jean Ar- 
mour, the daughter of a mason in the village. 
What was for Burns a prolonged courtship en- 
sued, and in the spring of 1786 he learned that 
Jean's condition was such that he gave her a 
paper acknowledging her as his wife. To his 
surprise and mortification the girl's father, who is 



36 BURNS 

said to have had a personal disHke to him and 
who well may have thought a man with his repu- 
tation and prospects was no promising son-in-law, 
opposed the marriage, forced Jean to give up the 
paper, and sent her off to another town. Burns 
chose to regard Jean's submission to her father 
as inexcusable faithlessness, and proceeded to in- 
dulge in the ecstatic misery of the lover betrayed. 
There is no doubt that he suffered keenly from 
the afifair: he writes to his friends that he could 
"have no nearer idea of the place of eternal pun- 
ishment" than what he had felt in his "own breast 
on her account. I have tried often to forget her : 
I have run into all kinds of dissipation and riot 
. . . to drive her out of my head, but all in 
vain." This is in a later letter than that in which 
he has "sunk into a lurid calm," and "subsided 
into the time-settled sorrow of the sable wid- 
ower." 

Yet other evidence shows that at this crisis also 
Burns's emotional experience was far from sim- 
ple. It was probably during the summer of the 
same year that there occurred the passages with 
the mysterious Highland Mary, a girl whose 
identity, after voluminous controversy, remains 
vague, but who inspired some of his loftiest love 



BIOGRAPHY 37 

poetry. Though Burns's feeling for her seems to 
have been a kind of interlude in reaction from the 
"cruelty" of Jean, he idealized it beyond his wont, 
and the subject of it has been exalted to the place 
among his heroines which is surely due to the 
long-suffering woman who became his wife. 

In this same summer Burns formed the project 
of emigrating. He proposed to go to the West 
Indies, and return for Jean when he had made 
provision to support her. This ofTer was refused 
by James Armour, but Burns persevered with the 
plan, obtained a position in Jamaica, and in the 
autumn engaged passage in a ship sailing from 
Greenock. The song, Will Ye Go to the Indies', 
My Mary, seems to imply that Highland Mary 
was invited to accompany him, but substantial 
evidence of this, as of most things concerning his 
relations with Mary Campbell, is lacking. From 
Thee, Eliza, I Mtist Go, supposed to be addressed 
to Elizabeth Miller, also belongs to this summer, 
and is taken to refer to another of the "under- 
plots in his drama of love." 

Meantime, at the suggestion of his friend and 
patron, Gavin Hamilton, Bums had begun to ar- 
range for a subscription edition of his poems. It 
seems to have been only after he went to Mossgiel 



38 BURNS 

that he had seriously conceived the idea of writ- 
ing for publication, and the decision was followed 
by a year of the most extraordinary fertility in 
composition. To 1785-1786 are assigned such 
satires as Holy Willie and the Address to the 
Unco Guid; a group of the longer poems includ- 
ing The Cotter's Saturday Night, The Jolly Beg- 
garSy Halloween, The Holy Fair, The Twa Dogs 
and The Vision; some shorter but no less famous 
pieces, such as the poems To a Louse, To a 
Mouse, To the Deil, To a Mountain Daisy and 
Scotch Drink; and a number of the best of his 
Epistles. Many of these, especially the church 
satires, had obtained a considerable local fame 
through circulation in manuscript, so that, pro- 
posals having been issued for an edition to be 
printed by Wilson of Kilmarnock, it was not 
found difficult to obtain subscriptions for more 
than half the edition of six hundred and twelve 
copies. The prospect of some return from this 
enterprise induced James Armour to take legal 
measures to obtain support for Jean's expected 
child, and Burns, fearing imprisonment, was 
forced to go into hiding while his book was pass- 
ing the press. The church, too, had taken cog- 
nizance of his offense, and both Jean and he had 



BIOGRAPHY 39 

to stand up before the congregation on three oc- 
casions to receive rebuke and make profession of 
repentance. He was at the same time completing 
the preparations for his voyage. In such extra- 
ordinary circumstances appeared the famous Kil- 
marnock edition, the immediate success of which 
soon produced a complete alteration in the whole 
outlook of the poet. 

In the first place, the consideration Burns 
gained from his volume induced Armour to relax 
his pursuit, and in September, when Jean became 
the mother of twins, the poet was in such a mood 
that the sentiment of paternity began to weigh 
against the proposed emigration. Some weeks 
later he learned through a friend that Doctor 
Blacklock, a poet and scholar of standing in lit- 
erary circles in Edinburgh, had praised his vol- 
ume highly, and urged a second and larger edi- 
tion. The upshot was that he gave up his passage 
(his trunk had been packed and was part way to 
Greenock), and determined instead on a visit to 
Edinburgh. The only permanent result of the 
whole West Indian scheme was thus a sheaf of 
amorous and patriotic farewells, of which the fol- 
lowing may be taken as examples : 



40 BURNS 



WILL YE GO TO THE INDIES, MY MARY? 

Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary, 
And leave auld Scotia's shore? 

Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary, 
Across the Atlantic's roar? 

sweet grows the lime and the orange. 
And the apple on the pine ; 

But a* the charms o' the Indies 
Can never equal thine. 

1 hae sworn by the Heavens to m.y Mary, 
I hae sworn by the Heavens to be true ; 

And sae may the Heavens forget me, 
When I forget my vow I 

O plight me your faith, my Mary, 
And plight me j^our lily-white hand ; 

O plight me your faith, my Mary, 
Before I leave Scotia's strand. 

We hae plighted our troth, my Mary, 

In mutual affection to join ; 
And curst be the cause that shall part us ! 

The hour, and the moment o' time ! 



THE GLOOMY NIGHT 

The gloomy night is gathering fast, 
Loud roars the wild inconstant blast, 
Yon murky cloud is foul with rain, 
I see it driving o'er the plain ; 



BIOGRAPHY 41 

The hunter now has left the moor, 
The scatter'd coveys meet secure, 
While here I wander, prest with care, 
Along the lonely banks of Ayr. 

The Autumn mourns her ripening corn 
By early Winter's ravage torn ; 
Across her placid azure sky, 
She sees the scowling tempest fly : 
Chill runs my blood to hear it rave, 
I think upon the stormy wave, 
Where many a danger I must dare, 
Far from the bonnie banks of Ayr. 

'Tis not the surging billow's roar, 
'Tis not that fatal, deadly shore ; 
Tho' death in ev'ry shape appear. 
The wretched have no more to fear : 
But round my heart the ties are bound, 
That heart transpierc'd with many a wound: 
These bleed afresh, those ties I tear. 
To leave the bonnie banks of Ayr. 

Farewell, old Coila's hills and dales, 
Her heathy moors and winding vales ; 
The scenes where wretched fancy roves. 
Pursuing past unhappy loves ! 
Farewell, my friends ! Farewell, my foes ! 
My peace with these, my love with those ; 
The bursting tears my heart declare. 
Farewell, my bonnie banks of Ayr! 



42 



BURNS 



ON A SCOTCH BARD, GONE TO THE 
WEST INDIES 

A' ye wha live by sowps o' drink, 
A' ye wha live by crambo-clink, 
A* ye wha live an' never think, 

Come mourn wi* mel 
Our bilHe's gi'en us a* a jink. 

An' owre the sea. 

Lament him, a* ye rantin core, 
Wha dearly like a random-splore ; 
Nae mair he'll join the merry roar, 

In social key; 
For now he's taen anither shore, 

An' owre the sea! 

The bonnie lasses weel may wiss him. 
And in their dear petitions place him, 
The widows, wives, an' a' may bless him 

Wi' tearfu' e'e ; 
For weel I wat they'll sairly miss him 

That's owre the sea ! 



O Fortune, they hae room to grumble ! 
Hadst thou taen aff some drowsy bummle, 
Wha can do nought but fyke an' fumble, 

'Twad been nae plea ; 
But he was gleg as ony wumble, 

That's owre the sea ! 



BIOGRAPHY 



43 



Auld cantie Kyle may weepers wear, 
An' stain them wi' the saut, saut tear : 
*Twill mak her poor auld heart, I fear, 

In flinders flee; 
He was her Laureat mony a year, 

That's owre the sea! 



cheerful, mourn- 
ing bands 
salt 



fragments 



He saw misfortune's cauld nor-west 
Lang mustering up a bitter blast ; 
A jillet brak his heart at last — 

111 may she be ! 
So took a berth afore the mast, 

An' owre the sea. 



jilt 



To tremble under Fortune's cummock 
On scarce a bellyfu' o' drummock, 
Wi' his proud independent stomach. 

Could ill agree ; 
So row't his hurdies in a hammock, 

An' owre the sea. 



cudgel 

meal and water 



rolled, buttocks 



He ne'er was gi'en to great misguidin', 
Yet coin his pouches wad na bide in ; 
Wi' him it ne'er was under hidin', 

He dealt it free : 
The Muse was a' that he took pride in, 

That's owre the sea. 



pockets would 



Jamaica bodies, use him weel, 
An' hap him in a cozie biel ; 
Ye'll find him aye a dainty chiel, 

And fu' o* glee; 
He wad na wrang'd the vera deil, 

That's owre the sea. 



cover, shelter 
fellow 



44 BURNS 

Fareweel, my rhyme-composing billie ! i 

Your native soil was right ill-willie ; | 

But may ye flourish like a lily, ; 

Now bonnilie ! 
I'll toast ye in my hindmost gillie, 

Tho' owre the sea I 

J. Edinburgh 

On the twenty-seventh of November, 1786, 
mounted on a borrowed pony, Burns set out for 
Edinburgh. He seems to have arrived there with- 
out definite plans, for, after having found lodging 
with his old friend Richmond, he spent the first 
few days strolling about the city. At home 
Burns had been an enthusiastic freemason, and 
it was through a masonic friend, Mr. James 
Dalrymple of Orangefield, near Ayr, that he was 
introduced to Edinburgh society. A decade or 
two earlier, that society, under the leadership of 
men like Adam Smith and David Hume had 
reached a high degree of intellectual distinction. 
A decade or two later, under Sir Walter Scott 
and the Reviewers it was again to be in some 
measure, if for the last time, a rival to London 
as a literary center. But when Burns visited it 
there was a kind of interregnum, and, little 
though he or they guessed it, none of the celebri- 



BIOGRAPHY 45 

ties he met possessed genius comparable to his 
own. In a very few weeks it was evident that he 
was to be the Hon of the season. By December 
thirteenth he is writing to a friend at Ayr : 

! "I have found a worthy warm friend in Mr. 
Dairy mple, of Orangefield, who introduced me to 
Lord Glencairn, a man whose worth and broth- 
erly kindness to me I shall remember when time 
shall be no more. By his interest it is passed in 
the Caledonian Hunt, and entered in their books, 
that they are to take each a copy of the second edi- 
tion [of the poems], for which they are to pay 
one guinea. I have been introduced to a good 
many of the Noblesse, but my avowed patrons 
and patronesses are the Duchess of Gordon, the 
Countess of Glencairn, with my Lord and Lady 
Betty — the Dean of Faculty [Honorable Henry 
Erskine] — Sir John White foord. I have like- 
wise warm friends among the literati; Professors 
[Dugald] Stewart, Blair, and Mr. Mackenzie — 
the Man of Feeling." 

Through Glencairn he met Creech the book- 
seller, with whom he arranged for his second edi- 
tion, and through the patrons he mentions and the 



46 BURNS 

Edinburgh freemasons, among whom he was soon 
at home, a large subscription hst was soon made 
up. In the Edinburgh Magazine for October, 
November, and December, James Sibbald had 
published favorable notices of the Kilmarnock 
edition, with numerous extracts, and when Henry 
Mackenzie gave it high praise in his Lounger for 
December ninth, and the London Monthly Re- 
view followed suit in the same month, it was felt 
that the poet's reputation was established. 

Of Burns's bearing in the fashionable and cul- 
tivated society into which he so suddenly found 
himself plunged we have many contemporary ac- 
counts. They are practically unanimous in praise 
of the taste and tact with which he acquitted 
himself. While neither shy nor aggressive, he 
impressed every one with his brilliance in conver- 
sation, his shrewdness in observation and criti- 
cism, and his poise and common sense in his per- 
sonal relations. One of the best descriptions of 
him was given by Sir Walter Scott to Lockhart. 
Scott as a boy of sixteen met Burns at the house 
of Doctor Adam Ferguson, and thus reports : 

"His person was strong and robust ; his manners 
rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness 



BIOGRAPHY 47 

and simplicity, which received part of its effect 
perhaps from one's knowledge of his extraordi- 
nary talents. ... I would have taken the 
poet, had I not known what he was, for a very 
sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch 
school; that is, none of your modern agricultur- 
ists who keep labourers for their drudgery, but 
the douce guidman who held his own plough. 
There was a strong expression of sense and 
shrewdness in all his lineaments : the eye alone, 
I think, indicated the poetical character and tem- 
perament. It was large, and of a cast which 
glowed (I say literally glowed) when he spoke 
with feeling or interest. I never saw such an- 
other eye in a human head, though I have seen 
themost distinguished men of my time. His con- 
versation expressed perfect self-confidence, with- 
out the slightest presumption. Among the men 
who were the most learned of their time and 
country, he expressed himself with perfect firm- 
ness, but without the least intrusive forwardness ; 
and when he differed an opinion, he did not hesi- 
tate to express it firmly, yet at the same time with 
modesty. ... I have only to add, that his 
dress corresponded with his manner. He was like 
a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the laird. 



48 BURNS 

I do not speak in malam partem, when I say I 
never saw a man in company with his superiors in 
station and information, more perfectly free from 
either the reality or the affectation of embarrass- 
ment. I was told, but did not observe it, that his 
address to females was extremely deferential, and 
always with a turn either to the pathetic or hu- 
morous, which engaged their attention particu- 
larly. I have heard the Duchess of Gordon 
remark this." 

Burns's letters written at this time show an 
amused consciousness of his social prominence, 
but never for a moment did he lose sight of the 
fact that it was only the affair of a season, and 
that in a few months he would have to resume his 
humble station. Yet this intellectual detachment 
did not prevent his enjoying opportunities for 
social and intellectual intercourse such as he had 
never known and was never again to know. Care- 
ful as he was to avoid presuming on his new 
privileges, he clearly threw himself into the dis- 
cussions in which he took part with all the zest 
of his temperament; and in the less formal con- 
vivial clubs to which he was welcomed he became 
^t once the king of good fellows. To the noble- 



BIOGRAPHY 49 

nen and others who befriended him he expressed 
himself in language which may seem exagger- 
ated; but the warmth of his disposition, and the 
letter writers of the eighteenth century on whom 
he had formed his style, sufficiently account for it 
without the suspicion of affectation or flattery. 
Whatever his vices, ingratitude to those who 
showed him kindness was not among them; and 
the sympathetic reader is more apt to feel pathos 
than to take offense in his tributes to his patrons. 
The real though not extraordinary kindness of 
the Earl of Glencairn, for example, was acknowl- 
edged again and again in prose and verse; and 
the Lament Burns wrote upon his death closes 
with these lines which rewarded the noble lord 
with an immortality he might otherwise have 
missed : 

The bridegroom may forget the bride 

Was made his wedded wife yestreen; 
The monarch may forget the crown 

That on his head an hour has been ; 
The mother may forget the child 

That smiles sae sweetly on her knee ; 
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn, 

And a* that thou hast done for me ! 

After a sojourn of a little more than five 
months, Burns left Edinburgh early in May for a 



50 BURNS 

tour in the south of Scotland. The poet was 
mounted on an old mare, Jenny Geddes, which he 
had bought in Edinburgh, and which he still 
owned when he settled at Ellisland. He was ac- 
companied by his bosom friend, Robert Ainslie. 
The letters and journals written during the four 
weeks of this tour give evidence of his apprecia- 
tion of scenery and his shrewd judgment of char- 
acter. He was received with much consideration 
in the houses he visited, and was given the free- 
dom of the burgh of Dumfries. On the ninth of 
June, 1787, he was back at Mauchline; and, call- 
ing at Armour's house to see his child, he was re- 
volted by the "mean, servile complaisance" he met 
with — the result of his Edinburgh triumphs. 
His disgust at the family, however, did not pre- 
vent a renewal of his intimacy with Jean. After 
a few days at home, he seems to have made a 
short tour in the West Highlands. July was spent 
at Mossgiel, and early in August he returned to 
Edinburgh in order to settle his accounts with 
Creech, his publisher. On the twenty-fifth he set 
out for a longer tour in the North accompanied 
by his friend Nicol, an Edinburgh schoolmaster, 
the Willie who "brewed a peck o' maut.'* They 
proceeded by Linlithgow, Falkirk, Stirling, Crieff, 



BIOGRAPHY 51 

Dunkeld, Aberfeldie, Blair Athole, Strathspey, 
to Inverness. The most notable episode of the 
journey northwards was a visit at the castle of 
the Duke of Athole, which passed with great sat- 
isfaction to both Burns and his hosts, and of 
which his Humble Petition of Bruar Water is a 
poetical memorial. At Stonehaven and Montrose 
he extended his acquaintance among his father's 
relatives.- He reached Edinburgh again on Sep- 
tember sixteenth, having traveled nearly six hun- 
dred miles. In October he made still another ex- 
cursion, through Clackmannanshire and into the 
south of Perthshire, visiting Ramsay of Ochter- 
tyre, near Stirling, and Sir William Murray of 
Ochtertyre in Strathearn. In all these visits made 
by ^ Burns to the houses of the aristocracy, it is 
interesting to note his capacity for pleasing and 
profitable intercourse with people of a class and 
tradition far removed from his own. Sensitive 
to an extreme and quick to resent a slight, he was 
at the same time finely responsive to kindness, and 
his conduct was governed by a tact and frank nat- 
uralness that are among the not least surprising 
of his powers. In spite of the fervor and florid- 
ness of some of his expressions of gratitude for 
favors from his noble friends, Burns was no 



52 BURNS 

snob; and it was characteristic of him to give up 
a visit to the Duchess of Gordon rather than sep- 
arate from his companion Nicol, who, in a fit of 
jealous sulks, refused to accompany him to Castle 
Gordon. 

The settlement with Creech proved to be a very 
tedious affair, and in the beginning of December 
the poet was about to leave the city in disgust 
when an accident occurred which gave opportu- 
nity for one of the most extraordinary episodes in 
the history of his relations with women. Just 
before, he had met a Mrs. McLehose who lived 
in Edinburgh with her three children, while her 
husband, from whom she had separated on ac- 
count of ill-treatment, had emigrated to Jamaica. 
A correspondence began immediately after the 
first meeting, with the following letter : 

''Madam: ^ 

"I had set no small store by my tea-drinking 
tonight, and have not often been so disappointed. 
Saturday evening I shall embrace the opportunity ; 
with the greatest pleasure. I leave this town this 
day se'ennight, and probably I shall not return 
for a couple of twelvemonths; but I must ever 
regret that I so lately got an acquaintance I shall 



BIOGRAPHY 53 

ever highly esteem, and in whose welfare I shall 
ever be warmly interested. Our worthy common 
friend, Miss Nimmo, in her usual pleasant way, 
rallied me a good deal on my new acquaintance, 
and, in the humour of her ideas, I wrote some 
lines, which I enclose to you, as I think they have 
a good deal of poetic merit; and Miss Nimmo 
tells me that you are not only a critic but a 
poetess. Fiction, you know, is the native region 
of poetry; and I hope you will pardon my vanity 
in sending you the bagatelle as a tolerable off- 
hand jeu d' esprit, I have several poetic trifles, 
w^hich I shall gladly leave with Miss Nimmo or 
you, if they were worth house-room; as there are 
scarcely two people on earth by whom it would 
mortify me more to be forgotten, though at the 
distance of nine score miles. I am. Madam, With 
the highest respect, 

"Your very humble servant, 

"Robert Burns." 
[December 6, 1787.] 

The night before Burns was to take tea with 
his new acquaintance, he was overturned by a 
drunken coachman, and received an injury to his 
knee which confined him to his rooms for several 



54 BURNS 

weeks. Meantime the correspondence went on 
with ever-increasing warmth from ''Madam," 
through "My dearest Madam," ''my dear kind 
friend," "my lovely friend," to "my dearest an- 
gel." They early agreed to call each other 
Clarinda and Sylvander, and the Arcadian names 
are significant of the sentimental nature of the 
relation. By the time of their second meeting — 
about a month after the first, — they had ex- 
changed intimate confidences, had discovered 
endless affinities, and had argued by the page on 
religion, Clarinda striving to win Sylvander over 
to her orthodox Calvinism. When he was again 
able to go out, his visits became for both of them 
"exquisite" and "rapturous" experiences, Cla- 
rinda struggling to keep on the safe side of discre- 
tion by means of "Reason" and "Religion," Syl- 
vander protesting his complete submission to her 
will. The appearance of passion in their letters 
goes on increasing, and Clarinda's fits of per- 
turbation in the next morning's reflections grow 
more acute. She does not seem to have become 
the poet's mistress, and it is impossible to gather 
what either of them expected the outcome of their 
intercourse to be. With a few notable exceptions, 
the verses which were occasioned rather than in- 



BIOGRAPHY 55 

spired by the affair are affected and artificial; 
and in spite of the warmth of the expressions in 
his letters it is hard to believe that his passion 
went very deep. In any case, on his return to 
Mauchline to find Jean Armour cast out by her 
own people after having a second time borne him 
twins, he faced his responsibilities in a more 
manly and honorable fashion than ever before, 
and made Jean his wife. The explanation of his 
final resolution is given repeatedly in almost the 
same words in his letters : "I found a much loved 
female's positive happiness or absolute misery 
among my hands, and I could not trifle with such 
a sacred deposit." It would appear that, however 
far the affair between him and Clarinda had 
passed beyond the sentimental friendship it began 
with, he did not regard it as placing in his hands 
any such "sacred deposit" as the fate of Jean, nor 
had one or two intrigues with obscure girls in Ed- 
inburgh shaken an affection which was much 
more deep-rooted than he often imagined. Cla- 
rinda was naturally deeply wounded by his mar- 
riage, and her reproaches of "villainy" led to a 
breach which was only gradually bridged. At one 
time, just before she set out for Jamaica to join 
her husband in an unsuccessful attempt at a rec- 



56 BURNS 

onciliatlon, Burns's letters again became frequent, 
the old fervor reappeared, and a couple of his best 
songs were produced. But at this time he had the 
— shall we say reassuring? — belief that he was 
not to see her again, and could indulge an emotion 
that had always been largely theatrical without 
risk to either of them. On her return he wrote 
her, it would seem, only once. For the character 
of Bums the incident is of much curious interest; 
for literature its importance lies in the two songs, 
Ae fond Kiss and My Nannie's Awa. The former 
was written shortly before her departure for the 
West Indies; the second in the summer of her 
absence. It is noteworthy that in them "Cla- 
rinda" has given place to "Nancy" and "Nannie." 
Beside them is placed for contrast, one of the 
pure Clarinda effusions. 

AE FOND KISS 

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever ! 
Ae farewell, and then for ever! 
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, 
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee. 
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him 
While the star of hope she leaves him ? 
Me, nae cheer fu' twinkle lights me, 
Dark despair around benights me. 



BIOGRAPHY 



57 



I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy, 
Naething could resist my Nancy ; 
But to see her was to love her. 
Love but her, and love for ever. 
Had we never lov'd sae kindly. 
Had we never lov'd sae blindly, 
Never met — or never parted, 
We had ne'er been broken-hearted. 



Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest! 
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest ! 
Thine be ilka joy and treasure. 
Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure, 
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever ; 
Ae f areweel, alas, for ever 1 
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, 
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee. 



every 



MY NANNIE'S AWA 

Now in her green mantle blythe Nature arrays, 
And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes, 
While birds warble welcomes in ilka green shaw ; 
But to me it's delightless — my Nannie's awa. 

The snawdrap and primrose our woodlands adorn 
And violets bathe in the weet o' the morn : 
They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw, 
They mind me o' Nannie — and Nannie's awa. 



hillsides 
wooded dell 



wet (dew) 



Thou laverock, that springs frae the dews o' the lawn lark 
The shepherd to warn o' the grey-breaking dawn, 
And thou, mellow mavis, that hails the night-fa', thrush 

Give over for pity — my Nannie's awa. 



58 BURNS 

Come, autumn, sae pensive, in yellow and gray, 
And soothe me wi' tidings o' nature's decay ; 
The dark, dreary winter, and wild-driving snaw 
Alane can delight me — now Nannie's awa. 



CLARINDA 

Clarinda, mistress of my soul, 

The measured time is run ! 
The wretch beneath the dreary pole 

So marks his latest sun. 

To what dark cave of frozen night 

Shall poor Sylvander hie, 
Depriv'd of thee, his life and light, 

The sun of all his joy? 

We part — but by these precious drops 

That fill thy lovely eyes ! 
No other light shall guide my steps 

Till thy bright beams arise. 

She, the fair sun of all her sex, 

Has blest my glorious day ; 
And shall a glimmering planet fix 

My worship to its ray? 

4. Ellisland 

In the spring of 1788 when Burns married 
Jean Armour, he took two other steps of the first 



BIOGRAPHY 59 

importance for his future career. The Edin- 
burgh period had come and gone, and all that his 
intercourse with his influential friends had 
brought him was the four or five hundred pounds 
of profit from his poems and an opportunity to 
enter the excise service. With part of the money 
he relieved his brother Gilbert from pressing obli- 
gations at Mossgiel by the loan of one hundred 
and eighty pounds, and with the rest leased the 
farm of Ellisland on the bank of the Nith, five 
or six miles above Dumfries. But before taking 
up the farm he devoted six weeks or so to tuition 
in the duties of an exciseman, so that he had this 
occupation to fall back on in case of another 
farming failure. During the summer he superin- 
tended the building of the farm-house, and in 
December Jean joined her husband. His satis- 
faction in his domestic situation is characteristic- 
ally expressed in a song composed about this time. 

I HAE A WIFE 

I hae a wife o' my ain, 

I'll partake wi* naebody; 
I'll tak cuckold frae nane, 

I'll gie cuckold to naebody. 



60 BURNS 

I hae a penny to spend, 
There — thanks to naebody; 

I hae naething to lend, 
I'll borrow frae naebody. 

I am naebody's lord, 

I'll be slave to naebody; 
I hae a guid braid sword, 

I'll tak dunts frae naebody. 

I'll be merry and free, 

I'll be sad for naebody; 
Naebody cares for me, 

I care for naebody. 

Early in his residence at Ellisland he formed 
a close relation with a neighboring proprietor, 
Colonel Robert Riddel. For him he copied into 
two volumes a large part of what he considered 
the best of his unpublished verse and prose, thus 
forming the well-kno\yn Glenriddel Manuscript. 
Had not one already become convinced of the fact 
from internal evidence, it would be clear enough 
from this prose volume that Burns's letters were 
often as much works of art to him as his poems. 
This is of supreme importance in weighing the 
epistolary evidence for his character and con- 
duct. Even when his words seem to be the di- 
rect outpourings of his feelings — of love, of 



BIOGRAPHY 61 

friendship, of gratitude, of melancholy, of devo- 
tion, of scorn — a comparative examination will 
show that in prose as much as in verse we are 
dealing with the work of a conscious artist, enam- 
ored of telling expression, aware of his reader, 
and anything but the naif utterer of unsophisti- 
cated emotion. To recall this will save us from 
much perplexity in the interpretation of his 
words, and will clear up many an apparent con- 
tradiction in his evidence about himself. 

Burns was never very sanguine about success 
on the Ellisland farm. By the end of the sum- 
mer of 1789 he concluded that he could not de- 
pend on it, determined to turn it into a dairy 
farm to be conducted mainly by his wife and sis- 
ters, and took up the work in the excise for 
which he had prepared himself. He had charge 
of a large district of ten parishes, and had to ride 
some two hundred miles a week in all weathers. 
With the work he still did on the farm one can 
see that he was more than fully employed, and 
need not wonder that there was little time for 
poetry. Yet these years at Ellisland were on the 
whole happy years for himself and his family; 
he found time for pleasant intercourse with some 
of his neighbors, for a good deal of letter-writing, 



62 BURNS 

for some interest in politics, and for the establish- 
ing, with Colonel Riddel, of a small neighborhood 
library. As an excise officer he seems to have 
been conscientious and efficient, though at times, 
in the case of poor offenders, he tempered jus- 
tice with mercy. Ultimately, despairing of mak- 
ing the farm pay and hoping for promotion in 
the government service, he gave up his lease, 
sold his stock, and in the autumn of 1791 moved 
to Dumfries, where he was given a district which 
did not involve keeping a horse, and which paid 
him about seventy pounds a year. Thus ended 
the last of Burns's disastrous attempts to make 
a living from the soil. 

5. Dumfries 

The house in which the Burnses with their 
three sons first lived in Dumfries was a three- 
roomed cottage in the Wee Vennel, now Banks 
Street. Though his income was small, it must 
be remembered that the cost of food was low. 
"Beef was 3d. to 5d. a lb.; mutton, 3d to 4j^d. ; 
chickens, 7d. to 8d. a pair; butter (the lb. of 24 
oz.), 7d. to 9d. ; salmon, 6d. to 9y2d. a lb.; cod, 
Id. and even ^/^d. a lb." Though hardly in easy 
circumstances, then, Burns's situation was such 



BIOGRAPHY 63 

that it was possible to avoid his greatest horror, 
debt. 

Meantime, his interest in poHtics had greatly 
quickened. He had been from youth a senti- 
mental Jacobite; but this had little effect upon 
his attitude toward the parties of the day. In 
Edinburgh he had worn the colors of the party 
of Fox, presumably out of compliment to his 
Whig friends, Glencairn and Erskine. During 
the Ellisland period, however, he had written 
strongly against the Regency Bill supported by 
Fox; and in the general election of 1790 he op- 
posed the Duke of 'Queensberry and the local 
Whig candidate. But in his early months in 
Dumfries we find him showing sympathy with 
the doctrines of the French Revolution, a sym- 
pathy which was natural enough in a man of his 
inborn democratic tendencies. A curious out- 
come of these was an incident not yet fully 
cleared up. In February, 1792, Burns, along with 
some fellow officers, assisted by a body of 
dragoons, seized an armed smuggling brig which 
had run aground in the Solway, and on her being 
sold, he bought for three pounds four of the 
small guns she carried. These he is said to have 
presented "to the French Convention," but they 



64 BURNS 

were seized by the British Government at Dover. 
As a matter of fact, the Convention was not con- 
stituted till September, and the Legislative As- 
sembly which preceded it was not hostile to 
Britain. Thus, Burns's action, though eccentric 
and extravagant, was not treasonable in law or 
in spirit, and does not seem to have entailed on 
him any unfortunate consequences. 

In the course of that year symptoms of the in- 
fection of part of the British public with revo- 
lutionary principles began to be evident, and the 
government was showing signs of alarm. The 
Whig opposition was clamoring for internal re- 
form, and Burns sided more and more definitely 
with it, and was rash enough to subscribe for a 
Reform paper called The Gazetteer, an action 
which would have put him under suspicion from 
his superiors, had it become known. Some notice 
of his Liberal tendencies did reach his official su- 
periors, and an inquiry was made into his po- 
litical principles which caused him no small 
alarm. In a letter to Mr. Graham of Fintry, 
through whom he had obtained his position, he 
disclaimed all revolutionary beliefs and all political 
activity. No action was taken against him, nor 
was his failure to obtain promotion to an Exarn- 



BIOGRAPHY 65 

inership due to anything but the slow progress 
involved in promotion by seniority. Hereafter, 
he exercised considerable caution in the expres- 
sion of his political sympathies, though he allowed 
himself to associate with men of revolutionary 
opinions. The feeling that he was not free to 
utter what he believed on public affairs was nat- 
urally chafing to a man of his independent nature. 
Burns's chief enjoyment in these days was the 
work he was doing for" Scottish song. While in 
Edinburgh he had made the acquaintance of an 
engraver, James Johnson, who had undertaken 
the publication of the Scots Musical Museum, a 
collection of songs and music. Burns agreed to 
help him by the collection and refurbishing of the 
words of old songs, and when these were impos- 
sible, by providing new words for the melodies. 
The work finally extended to six volumes; and 
before it was finished a more ambitious under- 
taking, managed by a Mr. George Thomson, was 
set on foot. Burns was invited to cooperate in 
this also, and entered into it with such enthusiasm 
that he was Thomson's main support. In both 
of these publications the poet worked purely with 
patriotic motives and for the love of song, and 
had no pecuniary interest in either. Once Thorn- 



66 BURNS 

son sent him a present of five pounds and en- 
dangered their relations thereby; later, when 
Burns was in his last illness, he asked and re- 
ceived from Thomson an advance of the same 
amount. Apart from these sums Burns never 
made or sought to make a penny from his writings 
after the publication of the first Edinburgh edi- 
tion. Twice he declined journalistic work for a 
London paper. Poetry was the great consolation 
of his life, and even in his severest financial 
straits he refused to consider the possibility of 
writing for money, regarding it as a kind of pros- 
titution. 

By the autumn of 1795 signs began to appear 
that the poet's constitution was breaking down. 
The death of his daughter Elizabeth and a severe 
attack of rheumatism plunged him into deep mel- 
ancholy and checked for a time his song-writing ; 
and though for a time he recovered, his disease 
returned early in the next year. It seems clear, 
too, that though the change from Ellisland to 
Dumfries relieved him of much of the severer 
physical exertion, other factors more than coun- 
terbalanced this relief. Burns had never been 
a slave to drink for its own sake; it had always 
been the accompaniment — in those days an almost 



BIOGRAPHY 67 

inevitable accompaniment — of sociability. Some 
of his wealthier friends in the vicinity were in 
this respect rather excessive in their hospitality; 
in Dumfries the taverns were always at hand; 
and as Burns came to realize the comparative 
failure of his career as a man, he found whisky 
more and more a means of escape for depression. 
Even if we distrust the local gossip that made 
much of the dissipations of his later years, it 
appears from the evidence of his physician that 
alcohol had much to do with the rheumatic and 
digestive troubles that finally broke him down. 
In July, 1796, he was sent, as a last resort, to 
Brow-on-Solway to try sea-bathing and country 
life; but he returned little improved, and well- 
nigh convinced that his illness was mortal. His 
mental condition is shown by the fact that pres- 
sure from a solicitor for the payment of a tai- 
lor's debt of some seven pounds, incurred for his 
volunteer's uniform, threw him into a panic lest 
he should be imprisoned, and his last letters are 
pitiful requests for financial help, and two notes 
to his father-in-law urging him to send her 
mother to Jean, as she was about to give birth 
to another child. In such harassing conditions he 
sank into dehrium, and died on July 21, 1796, 



68 BURNS 

The child, who died in infancy, was born on the 
day his father was buried. 

With Burns's death a reaction in popular opin- 
ion set in. He was given a military funeral; 
and a subscription which finally amounted to one 
thousand two hundred pounds was raised for his 
family. The official biography, by Doctor Currie 
of Liverpool, doubled this sum, so that Jean was 
enabled to bring up the children respectably, and 
end her days in comfort. Scotland, having 
done little for Burns in his life, was stricken with 
remorse when he died, and has sought ever since 
to atone for her neglect by an idolatry of the 
poet and by a more than charitable view of the 
man. 



CHAPTER II 
inheritance: language and literature 

THREE forms of speech were current in 
Scotland in the time of Burns, and, in 
different proportions, are current to-day: in the 
Highlands, north and west of a slanting line 
running from the Firth of Clyde to Aberdeen- 
shire, Gaelic; in the Lowlands, south and east 
of the same line. Lowland Scots; over the whole 
country, among the more educated classes , English. 
Gaelic is a Celtic language, belonging to an en- 
tirely different linguistic group from English, and 
having close affinities to Irish and Welsh. This 
tongue Burns did not know. Lowland Scots is 
a dialect of English, descended from the North- 
umbrian dialect of Anglo-Saxon. It has had a 
history of considerable interest. Down to the 
time of Chaucer, whose influence had much to 
do with making the Midland dialect the literary 
standard for the Southern kingdom, it is difficult 
to distinguish the written language of Edinburgh 
69 



70 BURNS 

from that of York, both being developments of 
Northumbrian. But as English writers tended 
more and more to conform to the standard of 
London, Northern Middle English gradually 
ceased to be written ; while in Scotland, separated 
and usually hostile as it was politically, the North- 
ern speech continued to develop along its own 
lines, until in the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 
tury it attained a form more remote from stand- 
ard English and harder for the modern reader 
than it had been a century before. The close 
connection between Scotland and France, con- 
tinuing down to the time of Queen Mary, led to 
the introduction of many French words which 
never found a place in English ; the proximity of 
the Highlands made Gaelic borrowings easy ; and 
the Scandinavian settlements on both coasts con- 
tributed additional elements to the vocabulary. 
Further, in its comparative isolation, Scots de- 
veloped or retained peculiarities in grammar and 
pronunciation unknown or lost in the South. 
Thus by 1550, the form of English spoken in 
Scotland was in a fair way to become an inde- 
pendent language. 

This process, however, was rudely halted by 
the Reformation. The triumph of this movement 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 71 

in England and its comparative failure in France 
threw Scotland, when it became Protestant, into 
close relations with England, while the "auld Al- 
liance" with France practically ended when Mary 
of Scots returned to her native country. Lead- 
ers like John Knox, during the early struggles of 
the Reformation, spent much time in England; 
and when they came home their speech showed 
the effect of their intercourse with their southern 
brethren of the reformed faith. The language 
of Knox, as recorded in his sermons and his 
History, is indeed far from Elizabethan Eng- 
lish, but it is notably less "broad" than the Scots 
of Douglas and Lindesay. Scotland had no ver- 
nacular translation of the Bible; and this im- 
portant fact, along with the English associations 
of many of the Protestant ministers, finally made 
the speech of the Scottish pulpit, and later of 
Scottish religion in general, if not English, at 
least as purely English as could be achieved. 

The process thus begun was carried farther in 
the next generation when, in 1603, James VI of 
Scotland became King of England, and the Court 
removed to London. England at that time was, 
of course, much more advanced in culture than 
its poorer neighbor to the north, and the courtiers 



72 BURNS 

who accompanied James to London found them- 
selves marked by their speech as provincial, and 
set themselves to get rid of their Scotticisms with 
an eagerness in proportion to their social aspira- 
tions. Scottish men of letters now came into 
more intimate relation with English literature, 
and finding that writing in English opened to 
them a much larger reading public, they nat- 
urally adopted the southern speech in their books. 
Thus men like Alexander, Earl of Stirling, and 
William Drummond of Hawthornden belong both 
in language and literary tradition to the English 
Elizabethans. 

Religion, society, and literature having all 
thrown their influence against the native speech 
of Scotland, it followed that the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries saw the progressive disuse 
of that speech among the upper classes of the 
country, until by the time of Burns, Scots was 
habitually spoken only by the peasantry and the 
humbler people in the towns. The distinctions 
between social classes in the matter of dialect 
were, of course, not absolute. Occasional mem- 
bers even of the aristocracy prided themselves 
on their command of the vernacular; and among 
the country folk there were few who could not 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 73 

make a brave attempt at English when they spoke 
with the laird or the minister. With Burns him- 
self, Lowland Scots was his customary speech at 
home, about the farm, in the tavern and the 
Freemasons' lodge ; but, as we have seen, his let- 
ters, being written mainly to educated people, 
are almost all pure English, as was his conversa- 
tion with these people when he met them. 

The linguistic situation that has been sketched 
finds interesting illustration in the language of 
Burns's poems. The distinction which is usually 
made, that he wrote poetry in Scots and verse in 
English, has some basis, but is inaccurately ex- 
pressed and needs qualification. The fundamen- 
tal fact is that for him Scots was the natural lan- 
guage of the emotions, English of the intellect. 
The Scots poems are in general better, not chiefly 
because they are in Scots iDut because they are 
concerned with matters of natural feeling; the 
English poems are in general poetically poorer, 
not because they are in English but because they 
are so frequently the outcome of moods not dom- 
inated by spontaneous emotion, but intellectual, 
conscious, or theatrical. He wrote English 
sometimes as he wore his Sunday blacks, with 
dignity but not with ease; sometimes as he wore 



74 BURNS 

the buff and blue, with buckskins and top-boots, 
which he donned in Edinburgh — "Hke a farmer 
dressed in his best to dine with the laird." In 
both cases he was capable of vigorous, common- 
sense expression; in neither was he likely to ex- 
hibit the imagination, the tenderness, or the hu- 
mor which characterized the plowman clad in 
home-spun. 

The Cotter's Saturday Night is an interesting 
illustration of these distinctions. The opening 
stanza is a dedicatory address on English models 
to a lawyer friend and patron ; it is pure English 
in language, stiff and imitatively "literary" in 
style. The stanzas which follow describing the 
homecoming of the cotter, the family circle, the 
supper, and the daughter's suitor, are in broad 
Scots, the language harmonizing perfectly with 
the theme, and they form poetically the sound 
core of the poem. In the description of family 
worship. Burns did what his father would do in 
conducting that worship, adopted English as more 
reverent and respectful, but inevitably as more 
restrained emotionally ; and in the moralizing pas- 
sage which follows, as in the apostrophes to 
Scotia and to the Almighty at the close, he nat- 
urally sticks to English, and in spite of a genuine 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 75 

enough exaltation of spirit achieves a result rather 
rhetorical than poetical. 

Contrast again songs like Corn Rigs or Whis- 
tle and ril Come To Thee, My Lad, with most 
of the songs to Clarinda. The former, in Scots, 
are genial, whole-hearted, full of the power of 
kindling imaginative sympathy, thoroughly con- 
tagious in their lusty emotion or sly humor. The 
latter, in English, are stiff, coldly contrived, con- 
sciously elegant or marked by the sentimental 
factitiousness of the affair that occasioned them. 
But their inferiority Is due less to the difference 
in language than to the difference in the mood. 
When, especially at a distance, his relation to 
Clarinda really touched his imagination, we have 
the genuinely poetical My Nannie's Awa and Ae 
Fond Kiss. The latter poem can be, with few 
changes, turned into English without loss of qual- 
ity; and its most famous lines have almost no 
dialect : 

Had we never lov'd sae kindly, 
Had we never lov'd sae blindly, 
Never met — or never parted, 
We had ne'er been broken-hearted. 

Finally, there are the English poems to High- 



76 BURNS 

land Mary. For some reason not yet fully un- 
derstood, the affair with Mary Campbell was 
treated by him in a spirit of reverence little felt 
in his other love poetry, and this spirit was nat- 
urally expressed by him in English. But in the 
almost English 

"Ye banks and braes and streams around 
The Castle of Montgomery," 

and in the pure English To Mary in Heaven, he 
is not at all hampered by the use of the Southern 
speech. Scots would not have heightened the 
poetry here, and for Burns Scots would have been 
less appropriate, less natural even, for the expres- 
sion of an almost sacred theme. 

The case, then, seems to stand thus. Burns 
commanded two languages, which he employed 
instinctively for different kinds of subject and 
mood. The subjects and moods which evoked 
vernacular utterance were those that with all 
writers are more apt to yield poetry, and in con- 
sequence most of his best poetry is in Scots. But 
when a theme naturally evoking English was 
imaginatively felt by him, the use of English did 
not prevent his writing poetically. And there 
were themes which he could handle equally well 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 77 

in either speech — as we see, for example, in the 
songs in The Jolly Beggars. 

Yet the language had an importance in itself. 
Though its vocabulary is limited in matters of 
science, philosophy, religion, and the like, Low- 
land Scots is very rich in homely terms and in 
humorous and tender expressions. For love, or 
for celebrating the effects of whisky, English is 
immeasurably inferior. The free use of the di- 
minutive termination in ie or 3,' — a termination 
capable of expressing endearment, familiarity, 
ridicule, and contempt as well as mere smallness 
— not only has considerable effect in emotional 
shading, but contributes to the liquidness of the 
verse by lessening the number of consonantal 
endings that make English seem harsh and abrupt 
to many foreign ears. Moreover, the very inde- 
terminateness of the dialect, the possibility of 
using varying degrees of "broadness," increased 
the facility of rhyming, and added notably to 
the ease and spontaneity of composition. Thus 
in Scots Burns was not only more at home, but 
had a medium in some respects more plastic than 
English. 

Language, however, was not the only element 
in his inheritance which helped to determine the 



78 BURNS 

nature and quality of Burns' s production. He 
was extremely sensitive to suggestion from his 
predecessors, and frankly avowed his obligations 
to them, so that to estimate his originality it is 
necessary to know something of the men at whose 
flame he kindled. 

As the Northern dialect of English was, before 
the Reformation, in a fair way to become an in- 
dependent national speech, so literature north of 
the Tweed had promise of a development, not in- 
deed independent, but distinct. Of the writers 
of the Middle Scots period, Henry son and Dun- 
bar, Douglas and Lindesay, Burns, it is true, knew 
httle ; and the tradition that they founded under- 
went in the latter part of the sixteenth and be- 
ginning of the seventeenth centuries an experi- 
ence in many respects parallel to that which has 
been described in the matter of language. The 
effect of the Reformation upon all forms of ar- 
tistic creation will be discussed when we come to 
speak particularly of the history of Scottish song; 
for the moment it is sufficient to say that the ab- 
sorption in theological controversy was unfavora- 
ble to the continuation of a poetical development. 
Under James VI, however, there were a few 
writers who maintained the tradition, notably 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 79 

Alexander Montgomery, Alexander Scott, and 
the Sempills. To the first of these is to be cred- 
ited the invention of the stanza called, from the 
poems in which Montgomery used it, the stanza 
of The Banks of Helicon or of The Cherry and 
the Slae. It was imitated by some of Montgom- 
ery's contemporaries, revived by Allan Ramsay, 
and thus came to Burns down a line purely Scot- 
tish, as it never seems to have been used in any 
other tongue. He first employed it in the Epistle 
to Davie, and it was made by him the medium of 
some of his most characteristic ideas. 

It's no in titles nor in rank: 

It's no in wealth like Lon'on Bank, 

To purchase peace and rest. 
It's no in makin muckle, mair, much, more 

It's no in books, it's no in lear, learning 

To make us truly blest: 
If happiness hae not her seat 

An' centre in the breast. 
We may be wise, or rich, or great. 

But never can be blest ! 
Nae treasures nor pleasures 

Could make us happy lang; 
The heart's aye's the part aye 

That makes us right or wrang. 

The Piper of Kilharchan, by Sir Robert Sem- 
pill of Beltrees (1595?-1661?), set a model for 



80 BURNS 

the humorous elegy on the Hving which reached 
Burns through Ramsay and Fergusson, and was 
followed by him in those on Poor Mailie and Tam 
Samson. The stanza in which it is written is far 
older than Sempill, having been traced as far back 
as the troubadours in the twelfth century, and 
being found frequently in both English and 
French through the Middle Ages; but from the 
time of Sempill on, it was cultivated with peculiar 
intensity in Scotland, and is the medium of so 
many of Burns's best-known pieces that it is often 
called Burns's stanza. 

Lament in rhyme, lament in prose, 
Wi' saut tears tricklin' down your nose; 
Our Bardie's fate is at a close, 

Past a' remead; 
The last, sad cape-stane o' his woe *s — 

Poor Mailie's dead ! 

The seventeenth century was a barren one for 
Scottish literature. The attraction of the larger 
English public and the disuse of the vernacular 
among the upper classes already discussed, drew 
to the South or to the Southern speech whatever 
literary talent appeared in the North, and it 
seemed for a time that, except for the obscure 
stream of folk poetry, Scottish vernacular liters- 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 81 

ture was at an end. In the beginning of the 
eighteenth century, however, interest began to 
revive. In 1706-9-11 James Watson published 
the three volumes of his Choice Collection of 
Comic and Serious Scots Poems, and in the third 
decade began to appear Allan Ramsay's Tea Table 
Miscellany (1724-40). These collections rescued 
from oblivion a large quantity of vernacular 
verse, some of it drawn from manuscripts of pre- 
Re formation poetry, some of it contemporary, 
some of it anonymous and of uncertain date, hav- 
ing come down orally or in chap-books and broad- 
sides. The welcome given to these volumes was 
an early instance of that renewed interest in older 
and more primitive literature that was manifested 
still more strikingly when Percy published his 
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry in 1765. Its 
influence on the production of vernacular litera- 
ture was evident at once in the original work of 
Ramsay himself; and the movement which cul- 
minated in Burns, though having its roots far 
back in the work of Henry son and Dunbar, was 
in effect a Scottish renascence, in which the chief 
agents before Burns were Hamilton of Gilbert- 
field, Ramsay himself, Robert Fergusson, and 



82 



BURNS 



song-writers like Mrs. Cockburn and Lady Anne 
Lindsay. 

Of this fact Burns was perfectly aware, and he 
was not only candid but generous in his acknowl- 
edgment of his debt to his immediate predeces- 



sors. 



head would be 


My senses wad be in a creel, 


climb 


Should I but dare a hope to speel, 




Wi' Allan, or wi' Gilbertfield, 


hills 


The braes o' fame; 


lawyer-fellow 


Or Fergusson, the writer-chiel, 




A deathless name. 



He knew Ramsay's collection and had a per- 
haps exaggerated admiration for The Gentle 
Shepherd. This poem, published in 1728, not 
only holds a unique position in the history of the 
pastoral drama, but is important in the present 
connection as being to Burns the most signal 
evidence of the possibility of a dignified litera- 
ture in the modern vernacular. Hamilton and 
Ramsay had exchanged rhyming epistles in the 
six-line stanza, and in these Burns found the 
model for his own epistles. Hamilton's Last 
Dying Words of Bonny Heck — a favorite grey- 
hound — had been imitated by Ramsay in Lucky 
S pence's Last Advice and the Last Speech of a 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 83 

Wretched Miser, and the form had become a 
Scottish convention before Burns produced his 
Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie. As im- 
portant as any of these was the example set by 
Ramsay and bettered by Burns of refurbishing 
old indecent or fragmentary songs. Robert Fer- 
gusson (1750-1774) was regarded by Burns still 
more highly than Ramsay, and his influence was 
even more potent. In his autobiographical let- 
ter to Doctor Moore he tells that about 1782 he 
had all but given up rhyming : *'but meeting with 
Fergusson's Scotch Poems, I strung anew my 
wildly-sounding, rustic lyre with emulating 
vigour." In the preface to the Kilmarnock edi- 
tion he is still more explicit as to his attitude. 

"To the poems of a Ramsay, or the glorious 
dawnings of the poor, unfortunate Fergusson, 
he, with equal unaffected sincerity, declares, that, 
even in the highest pulse of vanity, he has not 
the most distant pretensions. These two justly 
admired Scotch Poets he has often had in his 
eye in the following pieces; but rather with a 
view to kindle at their flame, than for servile imi- 
tation." 

To be more specific. Burns found the model 



84 BURNS 

for his Cotter's Saturday Night in Fergusson's 
Farmer's Ingle, for The Holy Fair in his Leifh 
Races, for Scotch Drink in his Caller Water, for 
The Twa Dogs and The Brigs of Ayr in his 
Planestanes and Causey, and Kirkyard Eclogues. 
In later years Burns grew somewhat more crit- 
ical of Ramsay, especially as a reviser of old 
songs; but for Fergusson he retained to the end 
a sympathetic admiration. When he went to 
Edinburgh, one of his first places of pilgrimage 
was the grave of him whom he apostrophized 
thus, 

O thou, my elder brother m misfortune, 
By far my elder brother in the muse! 

And he later obtained from the managers of the 
Canongate Kirk permission to erect a stone over 
the tomb. 

The fact, then, that Burns owed much to the 
tradition of vernacular poetry in Scotland and 
especially to his immediate predecessors is no new 
discovery, however recent critics may have 
plumed themselves upon it. Burns knew it well, 
and was ever ready to acknowledge it. What is 
more important than the mere fact of his inheri- 
tance is the use he made of it. In taking from 



II 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 85 

his elders the fruits of their experience in poetical 
conception and metrical arrangement, he but did 
what artists have always done; in outdistancing 
these elders and in almost every case surpassing 
their achievement on the lines they had laid 
dow^n, he did what only the greater artists succeed 
in doing. It is not in mere inventiveness and nov- 
elty but in first-hand energy of conception, in 
mastering for himself the old thought and the 
old form and uttering them with his personal 
stamp, in making them carry over to the reader 
with a new force or vividness or beauty, that the 
poet's originality consists. In these respects 
Burns's originality is no whit lessened by an ex- 
plicit recognition of his indebtedness to the stock 
from which he grew. 

His relation to the purely English literature 
w^hich he read is different and produced very 
different results. Shakespeare he reverenced, and 
that he knew him well is shown by the frequency 
of Shakespearean turns of phrase in his letters, 
as well as by direct quotation. But of influence 
upon his poetry there is little trace. He had a 
profound admiration for the indomitable will of 
Milton's Satan, and he makes it clear that this 
admiration affected his conduct. The most fre- 



86 BURNS 

quent praise of English writers in his letters is, 
however, given to the eighteenth-century authors 
— ^to Pope, Thomson, Shenstone, Gray, Young, 
Blair, Beattie, and Goldsmith in verse, to Sterne, 
Smollett, and Henry Mackenzie in prose. Echoes 
of these poets are common in his work, and the 
most frigid of his English verses show their in- 
fluence most clearly. To the sentimental tend- 
ency in the thought of the eighteenth century he 
was highly responsive, and the expression of it 
in The Man of Feeling appealed to him especially. 
In a mood which recurred painfully often he was 
apt to pride himself on his "sensibility" : the let- 
ters to Clarinda are full of it. The less fortunate 
effects of it are seen both in his conduct and in 
his poems in a fondness for nursing his emotions 
and extracting pleasure from his supposed 
miseries; the more fortunate aspects are re- 
flected in the tender humanity of poems like those 
To a Mouse, On Seeing a Wounded Hare, and 
To a Daisy — perhaps even in the Address to the 
Deil. He had naturally a warm heart and strong 
impulses; it is only when an element of conscious- 
ness or mawkishness appears that his "sensibil- 
ity" is to be ascribed to the fashionable philosophy 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 87 

of the day and the influence of his EngHsh 
models. 

For better or worse, then, Burns belongs to 
the literary history of Britain as a legitimate de- 
scendant of easily traced ancestors. Like other 
great writers he made original contributions from 
his individual temperament and from his partic- 
ular environment and experience. But these do 
not obliterate the marks of his descent, nor are 
they so numerous or powerful as to give support 
to the old myth of the "rustic phenomenon," the 
isolated poetical miracle appearing in defiance of 
the ordinary laws of literary dependence and tra- 
dition. 

If this is true of his models it is no less true 
oi his methods. Though simplicity and spon- 
taneity are among the most obvious of the quali- 
ties of his work, it is not to be supposed that such 
effects were obtained by a birdlike improvisation. 
"All my poetry," he said, "is the effect of easy 
composition but laborious correction," and the 
careful critic will perceive ample evidence in sup- 
port of the statement. We shall see in the next 
chapter with what pains he fitted words to mel- 
ody in his songs; an examination of the variant 



88 BURNS 

readings which make the establishment of his 
text peculiarly difficult shows abundant traces of 
deliberation and the labor of the file. In the fol- 
lowing song, the first four lines of which are old, 
it is interesting to note that, though he preserves 
admirably the tone of the fragment which gave 
him the impulse and the idea, the twelve lines 
which he added are in the effects produced by 
manipulation of the consonants and vowels and 
in the use of internal rhyme a triumph of con- 
scious artistic skill. The interest in technique 
which this implies is exhibited farther in many 
passages of his letters, especially those to George 
Thomson. 

GO FETCH TO ME A PINT O' WINE 

Go fetch to me a pint o' wine, 

An' fill it in a silver tassie; 
That I may drink, before I go, 

A service to my bonnie lassie. 
The boat rocks at the pier o' Leith, 

Fu' loud the wind blaws frae the ferry. 
The ship rides by the Berwick-law, 

And I maun leave my bonnie Mary. 

The trumpets sound, the banners fly, 
The glittering spears are ranked ready; 

The shouts o* war are heard afar, 
The battle closes thick and bloody; 



LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 89 

But it's no the roar o' sea or shore 
Wad male me langer wish to tarry; 

Nor shout o' war that's heard afar, 
It's leaving thee, my bonoie Mary. 



CHAPTER III 

BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 

WITH song-writing Burns began his 
poetical career, with song-writing he 
closed it; and, brilliant as was his achievement 
in other fields, it is as a song-writer that he ranks 
highest among his peers, it is through his songs 
that he has rooted himself most deeply in the 
hearts of his countrymen. 

The most notable and significant fact in con- 
nection with his making of songs is their rela- 
tion to the melodies to which they are sung. In 
the vast majority of cases these are old Scottish 
tunes, which were known to Burns before he 
wrote his songs, and were singing in his ear dur- 
ing the process of composition. The poet was 
no technical musician. Murdoch, his first teacher, 
says that Robert and Gilbert Burns "were left 
far behind by all the rest of the school" when he 
tried to teach them a little church music. "Rob- 
ert's ear, in particular, was remarkably dull, and 
90 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 91 

his voice untunable. It was long before I could 
get them to distinguish one tune from another." 
Either Murdoch exaggerated, or the poet's ear 
developed later (Murdoch is speaking of him be- 
tween the ages of six and nine) ; for he learned 
to fiddle a little, once at least attempted to com- 
pose an air, could read music fairly easily, and 
could write down a melody from memory. His 
correspondence with Johnson and Thomson shows 
that he knew a vast number of old tunes and was 
very sensitive to their individual quality and sug- 
gestion.^ Such a sentence as the following from 



1 The question of the nature and extent of Burns's musical abili- 
ties may be summed up in the words of the latest and most thor- 
ough student of his melodies: — "His knowledge of music was in fact 
elemental; his taste lay entirely in melody, without ever reaching an 
appreciation of contra-puntal or harmonious music. Nor, although in 
his^ youth he had learned the grammar of music and become ac- 
quainted with clefs, keys, and notes at the rehearsals of church 
music, which were in his day a practical part of the education of the 
Scottish peasantry, did he ever arrive at composition, except in the 
case of one melody which he composed for a song of his own at the 
age of about twenty-three, and this melody displeased him so much 
that he destroyed it and never attempted another. In the same way, 
although he practised the violin, he did not attain to excellence in 
execution, his playing being confined to strathspeys and other slow 
airs of the pathetic kind. On the other hand, his perception and his 
love of music are undeniable. For example, he possessed copies of 
the principal collections of Scottish vocal and instrumental music of 
the eighteenth century, and repeatedly refers to them in the Museum 
and in his letters. His copy of the Caledonian Pocket Companion 
(the largest collection of Scottish music), which copy still exists with 
pencil notes in his handwriting, proves that he was familiar with 
the whole contents. At intervals in his writings he names at least a 
dozen different collections to which he refers and from which he 
quotes with personal knowledge. Also he knew several hundred dif- 
ferent airs, not vaguely and in a misty way, but accurately as regards 



92 BURNS 

one of his Commonplace Books shows how im- 
portant his responsiveness to music was for his 
poetical composition. 

"These old Scottish airs are so nobly senti- 
mental that when one would compose to them, to 
south the tune, as our Scottish phrase is, over 
and over, is the readiest way to catch the in- 
spiration and raise the Bard into that glorious 
enthusiasm so strongly characteristic of our old 
Scotch Poetry." 

Again, once when Thomson had sent him a 
tune to be fitted with words, he replied : 

"Laddie lie near me must lie by me for some 
time. I do not know the air ; and until I am com- 
plete master of a tune in my own singing (such 
as it is), I never can compose for it. My way is : 
I consider the poetic sentiment correspondent to 
my idea of the musical expression; then choose 
my theme; begin one stanza; when that is com- 
posed, which is generally the most difficult part 



tune, time, and rhythm, so that he could distinguish one from an- 
other, and describe minute variations in the several copies of any 
tune which passed through his hands. . . . Many of the airs he 
studied and selected for his verses were either pure instrumental 
tunes, never before set to words, or the airs (from dance books) of 
lost songs, with the first lines as titles." — (James C. Dick, The Songs 
of Robert Burns, 1903, Preface, pp. viii, ix.) 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 93 

of the business, I walk out, sit down now and 
then, look out for subjects in nature around me 
that are in unison and harmony with the cogita- 
tions of my fancy and workings of my bosom, 
humming every now and then the air with the 
verses I have framed. When I feel my muse be- 
ginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside 
of my study, and then commit my effusion to 
paper; swinging at intervals on the hindlegs of 
my elbow chair, by w^ay of calling forth my own 
critical strictures as my pen goes on. Seriously, 
this at home is almost invariably my way." 
[September, 1793.] 

His wife, who had a good voice and a wade 
knowledge of folk-song, seems often to have been 
of assistance, and a further interesting detail is 
given by Sir James Stuart-Menteath from the 
evidence of a Mrs. Christina Flint. 

"When Burns dwelt at Ellisland, he was ac- 
customed, after composing any of his beautiful 
songs, to pay Kirsty a visit, that he might hear 
them sung by her. He often stopped her in the 
course of the singing when he found any word 
harsh and grating to his ear, and substituted one 



94 BURNS 

more melodious and pleasing. From Kirsty's ex- 
tensive acquaintance with the old Scottish airs, 
she was frequently able to suggest to the poet 
music more suitable to the song she was singing 
than that to which he had set it/' 

Kirsty and Jean were not his only aids in the 
criticism of the musical quality of his songs. 
From the time of the Edinburgh visit, at least, 
he was in the habit of seizing the opportunity af- 
forded by the possession of a harpsichord or a 
good voice by the daughters of his friends, and 
in several cases he rewarded his accompanist by 
making her the heroine of the song. Without 
drawing on the evidence of parallel phenomena 
in other ages and literatures, we can be sure 
enough that this persistent consciousness of the 
airs to which his songs were to be sung, and this 
critical observation of their fitness, had much to 
do with the extraordinary melodiousness of so 
many of them. 

We have seen that Burns received an impor- 
tant impulse to productiveness through his co- 
operation in the compiling of two national song 
collections. James Johnson, the editor of the 
first of these, was an all but illiterate engraver, 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 95 

ill-equipped for such an undertaking; and as the 
work grew in scale until it reached six volumes, 
Burns became virtually the editor — even writing 
the prefaces to several of the volumes. George 
Thomson, the editor of the other, A Select Col- 
lection of Original Scottish Airs, was a govern- 
ment clerk, an amateur in music, of indifferent 
taste and with a preference for English to the 
vernacular. In his collection the airs were har- 
monized by Pleyel, Kozeluch, Haydn, and Bee- 
thoven ; and he had the impudence to meddle with 
the contributions both of Burns and of the em- 
inent composers who arranged the melodies. 
Nothing is more striking than the patience and 
modesty of Burns in tolerating the criticism and 
alterations of Thomson. The main purpose in 
both The Scots Musical Museum and the Select 
Collection was the preservation of the national 
melodies, but when the editors came to seek words 
to go with them they found themselves confronted 
with a difficult problem. To understand its na- 
ture, it will be necessary to extend our historical 
survey. 

In addition to the effects of the Reformation 
in Scotland already indicated, there was another 
even more serious for arts and letters. The re- 



96 BURNS 

action against Catholicism in Scotland was pe- 
culiarly violent, and the form of Protestantism 
which replaced it was extremely puritanical. In 
the matter of intellectual education, it is true, 
Knox's ideas and institutions were enlightened, 
and have borne important fruit in making pre- 
vail in his country an uncommonly high level of 
general education and a reverence for learning. 
But on the artistic side the reformed ministers 
were the enemies not only of everything that sug- 
gested the ornateness of the old religion, but of 
beauty in every form. Under their influence, 
an influence extraordinarily pervasive and des- 
potic, art and song were suppressed, and Scotland 
was left a very mirthless country, absorbed in 
theological and political discussion, and having 
little outlet for the instinct of sport except heresy- 
hunting. 

Such at least seemed to be the case on the sur- 
face. But human nature is not to be totally 
changed even by such a force as the Reformation. 
Especially among the peasantry occasions re- 
curred — weddings, funerals, harvest-homes, New- 
Year's Eves, and the like — when, the minister 
being at a safe distance and whisky having re- 
laxed the awe of the kirk session, the "wee sinfu' 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 97 

fiddle" was produced, and song and the dance 
broke forth. It was under such clandestine con- 
ditions that the traditional songs of Scotland had 
been handed down for some generations before 
Burns's day, and the conditions had gravely af- 
fected their character. The melodies could not 
be stained, but the words had degenerated until 
they had lost most of whatever imaginative qual- 
ity they had possessed, and had acquired instead 
only grossness. 

Such words, it was clear, Johnson could not 
use in his Museum, and the discovery of Burns 
was to him the most extraordinary good fortune. 
For Burns not only knew, as we have seen, the 
old songs — words and airs — by the score, but was 
able to purify, complete, or replace the words ac- 
cording to the degree of their corruption. 
Various poets have caught up scraps of folk-song 
and woven them into their verse; but nowhere 
else has a poet of the people appeared with such 
a rare combination of original genius and sym- 
pathetic feeling for the tone and accent of the 
popular muse, as enabled Burns to recreate Scot- 
tish song. If patriotic Scots wish to justify the 
achievement of Burns on moral grounds, it is here 
that their argument lies : for whatever of coarse- 



98 BURNS 

ness and license there may have been in his life 
and writings, it is surely more than counter- 
balanced by the restoration to his people of the 
possibility of national music and clean mirth. 

One can not classify the songs of Burns into 
two clearly separated groups, original and re- 
modeled, for no hard lines can be drawn. Since 
he practically always began with the tune, he fre- 
quently used the title or the first line of the old 
song. He might do this, yet completely change 
the idea ; or he might retain the idea but use none 
of the old words. In other cases the first stanza 
or the chorus is retained; in still others the new 
song is sprinkled with here a phrase and there an 
epithet recalling the derelict that gave rise to it. 
Some are made up of stanzas from several dif- 
ferent predecessors, others are almost centos of 
stock phrases. 

The contribution thus made to Johnson's col- 
lection, of songs rescued or remade or wholly 
original, amounted to some one hundred eighty- 
four; to Thomson's about sixty- four. Some ex- 
amples will make clear the nature of his services. 

Auld Lang Syne, perhaps the most wide-spread 
of all songs among the English-speaking peoples, 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 99 

is in its oldest extant form attributed on uncertain 
grounds to Francis Sempill of Beltrees or Sir 
Robert Aytoun.^ That still older forms had ex- 
isted appears from its title in the broadside in 
which it is preserved : 

"An excellent and proper new ballad, entitled 
Old Long Syne. Newly corrected and amended, 
with a large and new edition [sic] of several ex- 
cellent love lines." 

It opens thus : 

Should old acquaintance be forgot 

And never thought upon, 
The Flames of Love extinguished 

And freely past and gone? 
Is thy kind Heart now grown so cold 

In that Loving Breast of thine, 
That -thou can'st never once reflect 

On old-long-syne. 

And so on, for eighty lines. 

Allan Ramsay rewrote it for his Tea-Table 
Miscellany (1724), and a specimen stanza will 
show that it was still going down-hill : 

^ The melody to which the song is now sung is not that to which 
Burns wrote it, but was an old strathspey tune. It is possible, how- 
ever, that he agreed to its adoption by Thomson. 



100 BURNS 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot 

Tho* they return with scars ? 
These are the noble hero's lot, 

Obtained in glorious wars ; 
Welcome, my Varo, to my breast. 

Thy arms about me twine, 
And make me once again as blest 

As I was lang syne. 

The remaining four stanzas are worse. Burns 
may have had further hints to work on which 
are now lost; but the best part of the song, stanzas 
three and four, are certainly his, and it is unlikely 
that he inherited more than some form of the first 
verse and the chorus. 

AULD LANG SYNE 

old Should auld acquaintance be forgot 

mind And never brought to min'? 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, 
long ago And auld lang syne? 

For auld lang syne, my dear. 

For auld lang syne, 
We'll tak a cup o* kindness yet. 

For auld lang syne. 

will pay for And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp, 

And surely I'll be mine ; 
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet 
For auld lang syne. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 101 

We twa hae run about the braes, two have, hill- 

sides 
And pu'd the gowans fine ; pulled, daisies 

But we've wander'd mony a weary foot 

Sin' auld lang syne. 

We twa hae paidled i' the burn, waded, brook 

From morning sun till dine ; noon 

But seas between us braid hae roar'd broad 
Sin' auld lang syne. 

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere, comrade 

And gie's a hand o' thine ; give me 

And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught, draught of good 
For auld lang syne. 

A more remarkable case of patchwork is A. 
Red, Red Rose. Antiquarian research has dis- 
covered in chap-books and similar sources four 
songs, from each of which a stanza, in some such 
form as follows, seems to have proved suggestive 
to Burns : 

(1) Her cheeks are like the Roses 

That blossom fresh in June, 
O, she's like a new strung instrument 
That's newly put in tune. 

(2) Altho' I go a thousand miles 

I vow thy face to see, 
Altho' I go ten thousand miles 
I'll come again to thee, dear Love, 
I'll come again to thee. 



102 BURNS 

(3) The seas they shall run dry, 

And rocks melt into sands ; 
Then I'll love you still, my dear, 
When all those things are done. 

(4) Fare you well, my own true love, 

And fare you well for a while, 
And I will be sure to return back again, 
If I go ten thousand mile. 

The genealogy of the lyric is still more compli- 
cated than these sources imply, but the specimens 
given are enough to show the nature of the ore 
from which Burns extracted the pure gold of his 
well-known song: 



MY LOVE IS LIKE A RED RED ROSE 

O, my love is like a red red rose 
That's newly sprung in June : 

O, my love is like the melodie 
That's sweetly play'd in tune. 

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass. 

So deep in love am I : 
And I will love thee still, my dear. 

Till a' the seas gang dry. 

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear. 
And the rocks melt wi' the sun : 

And I will love thee still, my dear. 
While the sands o* life shall run. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 103 

And fare thee weel, my only love, 

And fare thee weel a while ! 
And I will come again, my love, 

Tho* it were ten thousand mile. 

Of the songs already quoted, the germ of Ae 
Fond Kiss lies in the first line of Robert Dodsley's 
Parting Kiss, 

**One fond kiss before we part;" 

/ Hae a Wife o' My Ain, borrows with slight 
modification the first two lines; a model for My 
Nannie has been found in an anonymous 
eighteenth-century fragment as well as in a song 
of Ramsay's, but neither contributes more than 
the phrase which names the tune as well as the 
words; The Rigs o' Barley was suggested by a 
verse of an old song : 

O, corn rigs and rye rigs, 

O, corn rigs are bonie ; 
And whene'er you meet a bonie lass 

Preen up her cockernonie. 

Handsome Nell, Mary Morison, Will Ye Go to 
the Indies, The Gloomy Night, and My Nannie's 
Awa are entirely original; and a comparison of 
their poetical quality with those having their 



104 



BURNS 



model or starting point in an older song will 
show that, however brilliantly Burns acquitted 
himself in his task of refurbishing traditional ma- 
terial, he was in no way dependent upon such 
material for inspiration. 

From what has been said of the occasions of 
these verses, however, it is clear that inspiration 
from the outside was not lacking. The tradi- 
tional association of wine, woman, and song cer- 
tainly held for Burns, nearly all his lyrics being 
the outcome of his devotion to at least two of 
these, some of them, like the following, to all 
three. 

YESTREEN I HAD A PINT O' WINE 

Yestreen I had a pint o' wine, 

A place where body saw na' ; 
Yestreen lay on this breast o' mine 

The gowden locks of Anna. 
The hungry Jew in wilderness 

Rejoicing o'er 1 s manna, 
Was naething to my hinny bliss 

Upon the lips of Anna. 



Ye monarchs, tak the east and west, 

Frae Indus to Savannah ! 
Gie me within my straining grasp 

The melting form of Anna. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 105 

There I'll despise imperial charms, 

An Empress or Sultana, 
While dying raptures in her arms 

I give and take with Anna ! 

Awa, thou flaunting god o' day I 

Awa, thou pale Diana ! 
Ilk star, gae hide thy twinkling ray 

When I'm to meet my Anna. 
Come, in thy raven plumage, night ! 

(Sun, moon, and stars withdrawn a') 
And bring an angel pen to write 

My transports wi* my Anna I 



Each, go 



(Postscript) 



The kirk and state may join, and tell 

To do such things I mauna: 
The kirk and state may gae to hell. 

And I'll gae to my Anna. 
She is the sunshine o' my ee, 

To live but her I canna ; 
Had I on earth but wishes three, 

The first should be my Anna. 



must not 



without 



Nothing could be more hopeless than to attempt 
to classify Burns's songs according to the amours 
that occasioned them, and to seek to find a con- 
stant relation between the reality and intensity of 
the passion and the vitality of the poetry. At 
times some relation does seem apparent, as we 



106 



BURNS 



may discern beneath the vigor of the song just 
quoted a trace of a conscious attempt to brave his 
conscience in connection with the one proved in- 
fideHty to Jean after his marriage. Again, in 
such songs as Of a' the Airts, Poortith Cauld, 
and others addressed to Jean herself, we have an 
expression of his less than rapturous but entirely 
genuine affection for his wife. 

OF A' THE AIRTS 

\ 

Of a' the airts the wind can blaw, 

I dearly hke the west, 
For there the bonnie lassie lives, 

The lassie I lo'e best : 
There wild woods grow, and rivers row, 

And mony a hill between ; 
But day and night my fancy's flight 

Is ever wi' my Jean. 



I see her in the dewy flowers, 

I see her sweet and fair : 
I hear her in the tunefu' birds, 

I hear her charm the air : 
There's not a bonnie flower that springs 

By fountain, shaw, or green ; 
There's not a bonnie bird that sings, 

But minds me o* my Jean. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 107 



THIS IS NO MY AIN LASSIE 

O this is no my ain lassie, 

Fair tho' the lassie be ; 
O weel ken I my ain lassie, 

Kind love is in her e'e. 

1 see a form, I see a face, 

Ye weel may wi' the fairest place : 

It wants, to me, the witching grace, 

The kind love that's in her e'e. 



She's bonnie, blooming, straight, and tall, 
And lang has had my heart in thrall ; 
And aye it charms my very saul. 
The kind love that's in her e'e. 



soul 



A thief sae pawkie is my Jean, 
To steal a blink, by a' unseen ; 
But gleg as light are lovers' e'en, 
When kind love is in the e'e. 



sly 

glance 
nimble, eyes 



It may escape the courtly sparks. 
It may escape the learned clerks ; 
But weel the watching lover marks 
The kind love that's in her e'e. 



POORTITH CAULD 

O poortith cauld, and restless love. 
Ye wreck my peace between ye ; 

Yet poortith a* I could forgive. 
An* 'twere na for my Jeanie. 



cold poverty 



If 'twere not 



108 BURNS 

O why should fate sic pleasure have, 
^ Life's dearest bands untwining? 
Or why sae sweet a flower as love 
Depend on Fortune's shining? 

The warld's wealth when I think on, 
Its pride, and a' the lave o't, — 

My curse on silly coward man, 
That he should be the slave o't. 

Her een sae bonnie blue betray 
How she repays my passion ; 

But prudence is her o'erword aye, 
She talks of rank and fashion. 

O wha can prudence think upon. 

And sic a lassie by him ? 
O wha can prudence think upon. 

And sae in love as I am? 

How blest the wild-wood Indian's fate 1 
He woos his artless dearie — 

The silly bogles, Wealth and State, 
Can never make him eerie. 



MY WIFE'S A WINSOME WEE THING 



She is a winsome wee thing, 
She is a handsome wee thing, 
She is a lo'esome wee thing, 

This sweet wee wife o' mine. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 109 

I never saw a fairer, 
I never lo'ed a dearer, 

And neist my heart FlI wear her, "c^^t 

For fear my jewel tine. ^« ^ost 

The warld's wrack, we share o't, 
The warstle and the care o't; struggle 

Wi' her I'll blythely bear it, 
And think my lot divine. 

Similarly, most of the lyrics addressed to Cla- 
rinda in Edinburgh are marked by the senti- 
mentalism and affectation of an affair that en- 
gaged only one side, and that among the least 
pleasing, of the many-sided temperament of the 
poet. 

But, in general, with Burns as with other poets, 
it was not the catching of a first-hand emotion at 
white heat that resulted in the best poetry, but 
the stimulating of his imagination by the vision 
of a person or a situation that may have had but 
the hint of a prototype in the actual. We have 
already noted that the best of the Clarinda poems 
were written in absence, and that they drop the 
Arcadian names which typified the make-believe 
element in that complex affair. So a number of 
his most charming songs are addressed to girls 
of whom he had had but a glimpse. But that 



no BURNS 

glimpse sufficed to kindle him, and for the poetry 
it was all advantage that it was no more. 

His relations with women were extremely va- 
ried in nature. At one extreme there were 
friendships like that with Mrs. Dunlop, the letters 
to whom show that their common interests were 
mainly moral and intellectual, and were mingled 
with no emotion more fiery than gratitude. At 
the other extreme stand relations like that with 
Anne Park, the heroine of Yestreen I had a Pint 
o' Wine, which were purely passionate and transi- 
tory. Between these come a long procession af- 
fording excellent material for the ingenuity of 
those skilled in the casuistry of the sexes: the 
boyish flame for Handsome Nell; the slightly 
more mature feeling for Ellison Begbie ; the vari- 
ous phases of his passion for Jean Armour; the 
perhaps partly factitious reverence for Highland 
Mary; the respectful adoration for Margaret 
Chalmers to whom he is supposed to have pro- 
posed marriage in Edinburgh ; the deliberate pos- 
ing in his compliments to Chloris (Jean Lori- 
mer) ; the grateful gallantry to Jessie Lewars, 
who ministered to him on his deathbed. 

In the later days in Dumfries, when his vitality 
was running low and he was laboring to supply 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 111 

Thomson with verses even when the spontaneous 
impulse to compose was rare, we find him theoriz- 
ing on the necessity of enthroning a goddess for 
the nonce. Speaking of Craigieburn-wood and 
Jean Lorimer, he writes to his prosaic editor : 

*The lady on whom it was made is one of the 
finest women in Scotland; and in fact (entre 
nous) is in a manner to me what Sterne's Eliza 
was to him — a Mistress, or Friend, or what you 
will, in the guileless simplicity of Platonic love. 
(Now, don't put any of your squinting construc- 
tions on this, or have any clishmaclaver about it 
among our acquaintances.) I assure you that to 
my lovely Friend you are indebted for many of 
your best songs of mine. Do you think that the 
sober gin-horse routine of existence could inspire 
a man with life, and love, and joy — could fire him 
with enthusiasm, or melt him with pathos equal to 
the genius of your Book ? No, no ! ! ! Whenever 
I want to be more than ordinary in song; to be in 
some degree equal to your diviner airs, do you 
imagine I fast and pray for the celestial emana- 
tion? Tout au contraire! I have a glorious 
recipe ; the very one that for his own use was in- 
vented by the Divinity of Healing and Poesy 



112 BURNS 

when erst he piped to the flocks of Admetus. I 
put myself in a regimen of admiring a fine 
woman; and in proportion to the adorabiHty of 
her charms, in proportion you are delighted with 
my verses. The lightning of her eye is the god- 
head of Parnassus, and the witchery of her smile 
the divinity of Helicon !" 

Burns is here, of course, on his rhetorical high 
horse, and the songs to Chloris hardly bear him 
out ; but there is much in the passage to enlighten 
us as to his composing processes. In his younger 
days his hot blood welcomed every occasion of 
emotional experience; toward the end, he sought 
such occasions for the sake of the patriotic task 
that lightened with its idealism the gathering 
gloom of his breakdown. But throughout, and 
this is the important point to note in relating his 
poetry to his life, his one mode of complimentary 
address to a woman was in terms of gallantry. 

The following group of love songs illustrate 
the various phases of his temperament which we 
have been discussing. The first two are to Mary 
Campbell, and exhibit Burns in his most reveren- 
tial attitude toward women ; 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 113 



HIGHLAND MARY 

Ye banks, and braes, and streams around 

The castle o' Montgomery, 
Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, 

Your waters never drumlie ! muddy 

There Simmer first unfauld her robes, may S. f. unfold 

And there the langest tarry; 
For there I took the last fareweel 

O' my sweet Highland Mary. 

How sweetly bloom'd the gay green birk, tirch 

How rich the hawthorn's blossom, 
As underneath their fragrant shade 

I clasp'd her to my bosom ! 
The golden hours on angel wings 

Flew o'er me and my dearie ; 
For dear to me as light and life 

Was my sweet Highland Mary. 

Wi' mony a vow and lock'd embrace 

Our parting was f u' tender ; 
And, pledging aft to meet again, 

We tore oursels asunder; 
But oh ! fell death's untimely frost, 

That nipt my flower sae early ! 
Now green's the sod, and cauld's the clay, cold 

That wraps my Highland Mary ! 

O pale, pale now, those rosy lips, 

I aft hae kiss'd sae fondly! 
And closed for aye the sparkling glance, 

That dwelt on me sae kindly ! 



114 



And mould'ring now in silent dust, 

That heart that lo'ed me dearly ! 
But still within my bosom's core 

Shall live my Highland Mary. 

TO MARY IN HEAVEN 

Thou lingering star, with lessening ray, 

That lov'st to greet the early morn, 
Again thou usherest in the day 

My Mary from my soul was torn. 
O Mary ! dear departed shade ! 

Where is thy place of blissful rest? 
Seest thou thy lover lowly laid? 

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? 

That sacred hour can I forget? 

Can I forget the hallow'd grove, 
Where by the winding Ayr we met, 

To live one day of parting love? 
Eternity will not efface 

Those records dear of transports past; 
Thy image at our last embrace — 

Ah ! little thought we 'twas our last ! 

Ayr gurgling kiss'd his pebbled shore, 

O'erhung with wild woods, thickening green; 
The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar, 

Twin'd amorous round the raptur'd scene. 
The flowers sprang wanton to be prest, 

The birds sang love on ev'ry spray, 
Till too, too soon, the glowing west 

Proclaim'd the speed of winged day. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 115 

Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes, 

And fondly broods with miser care ! 
Time but the impression stronger makes, 

As streams their channels deeper wean 
My Mary, dear departed shade ! 

Where is thy place of blissful rest? 
Seest thou thy lover lowly laid? 

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? 

The group that follow are addressed either to 
unknown divinities or to girls who inspired only 
a passing devotion. In the case of Bonnie Lesley, 
there was no question of a love-affair : the song 
is merely a compliment to a young lady he met 
and admired. Auld Rob Morris is probably 
purely dramatic. 



CA' THE YOWES 

(Second Version) 

Ca' the yowes to the knowes, 
Ca' them where the heather grows, 
Ca' them where the burnie rows, 
My bonnie dearie. 



ewes, knolls 



brooklet rolls 



Hark ! the mavis* evening sang 
Sounding Clouden's woods amang; 
Then a-faulding let us gang, 
My bonnie dearie. 



thrush's 



a-folding, go 



go 



116 BURNS 

We'll gae down by Clouden side, 
Thro' the hazels, spreading wide 
O'er the waves that sweetly glide 
To the moon sae clearly. 



Yonder Clouden's silent towers, 
Where at moonshine's midnight hours, 
O'er the dewy bending flowers, 
Fairies dance sae cheery. 



Ghost, goblin 
Nought 



Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear ; 
Thou'rt to Love and Heaven sae dear, 
Nocht of ill may come thee near. 
My bonnie dearie. 



stolen 



Fair and lovely as thou art, 
Thou hast stown my very heart; 
I can die — but canna part, 
My bonnie dearie. 



AFTON WATER 

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, 
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise ; 
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, 
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. 



Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen. 
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den. 
Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear, 
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 117 

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills, 
Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills; 
There daily I wander as noon rises high, 
My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye. 

How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below. 

Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow ; 

There oft as mild Ev'ning weeps over the lea, 

The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me. birch 

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides, 
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides ; 
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave, 
As gathering sweet flow'rets she stems thy clear wave. 

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, 
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays ; 
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, 
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. 



THE BLUE-EYED LASSIE 
I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen, went, road last 

night 

A gate, I fear, I'll dearly rue ; 
I gat my death frae twa sweet een, got, eyes 

Twa lovely een o' bonnie blue. 
'Twas not her golden ringlets bright, 

Her lips like roses wat wi' dew, wet 

Her heaving bosom lily-white ; 

It was her een sae bonnie blue. 



118 



BURNS 



She talk'd, she smil'd, my heart she wyl'd, 

She charm'd my soul I wist na how ; 
And aye the stound, the deadly wound, 

Came frae her een sae bonnie blue. 
But 'spare to speak, and spare to speed* — 

She'll aiblins listen to my vow : 
Should she refuse, I'll lay my dead 

To her twa een sae bonnie blue. 



BONNIE LESLEY 

O saw ye bonnie Lesley 
As she gaed o'er the border? 

She's gane, like Alexander, 
To spread her conquests farther. 

To see her is to love her. 
And love but her for ever ; 

For Nature made her what she is, 
And never made anither ! 

Thou art a queen, fair Lesley, 
Thy subjects, we before thee: 

Thou art divine, fair Lesley, 
The hearts o* men adore thee. 



The Deil he could na scaith thee, 
Or aught that wad belang thee; 

He'd look into thy bonnie face, 
And say, 'I canna wrang thee.* 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 119 

The Powers aboon will tent thee; 

Misfortune sha'na steer thee; 
Thou'rt like themselves sae lovely, 

That ill they'll ne'er let near thee. 



above, guard 
shall not disturb 



Return again, fair Lesley, 

Return to Caledonie! 
That we may brag we hae a lass 

There's nane again sae bonnie. 



no other 



LASSIE Wr THE LINT-WHITE LOCKS 



Lassie wi' the lint-white locks, 
Bonnie lassie, artless lassie, 

Wilt thou wi' me tent the flocks ? 
Wilt thou be my dearie, O ? 



flaxen 
watch 



Now nature deeds the flowery lea, 
And a' is young and sweet like thee; 
O wilt thou share its joys wi' me. 
And say thou'lt be my dearie, O. 



clothes 



The primrose bank, the wimpling burn, 
The cuckoo on the milk-white thorn, 
The wanton lambs at early morn 
Shall welcome thee, my dearie, O. 



winding 



And when the welcome simmer-shower 
Has cheer'd ilk drooping little flower, 
We'll to the breathing woodbine bower 
At sultry noon, my dearie, O. 



every 



120 



BURNS 



When Cynthia lights, wi' silver ray, 
The weary shearer's hameward way. 
Thro' yellow waving fields we'll stray, 
And talk o' love, my dearie, O. 

And when the howling wintry blast 
Disturbs my lassie's midnight rest; 
Enclasped to my faithfu' breast, 
I'll comfort thee, my dearie, O. 

MONTGOMERIE'S PEGGY 

Altho' my bed were in yon muir, 
Amang the heather, in my plaidie, 

Yet happy, happy would I be, 
Had I my dear Montgomerie's Peggy. 

When o'er the hill beat surly storms, 
And winter nights were dark and rainy, 

I'd seek some dell, and in my arms 
I'd shelter dear Montgomerie's Peggy. 

Were I a Baron proud and high, 
And horse and servants waiting ready. 

Then a' 't wad gie o' joy to me, 
The sharin't wi' Montgomerie's Peggy. 



THE LEA-RIG 

When o'er the hill the eastern star 
Tells bughtin-time is near, my jo; 

And owsen frae the furrow'd field 
Return sae dowf and wearie O ; 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 121 



Down by the burn, where scented birks 
Wi' dew are hanging clear, my jo, 

I'll meet thee on the lea-rig, 
My ain kind dearie O. 

In mirkest glen, at midnight hour, 

I'd rove, and ne'er be eerie O, 
If thro' that glen I gaed to thee. 

My ain kind dearie O. 
Altho' the night were ne'er sae wild, 

And I were ne'er sae wearie O, 
I'd meet thee on the lea-rig, 

My ain kind dearie O. 

The hunter lo'es the morning sun. 

To rouse the mountain deer, my jo; 
At noon the fisher takes the glen. 

Along the burn to steer, my jo; 
Gie me the hour o* gloamin grey 

It maks my heart sae cheery O, 
To meet thee on the lea-rig. 

My ain kind dearie O. 



sweetheart 

grassy ridge 
own 

darkest 
scared 
went 



loves 



twilight 



AULD ROB MORRIS 

There's auld Rob Morris that wons in yon glen, 
He's the king o' gude fellows and wale of auld men 
He has gowd in his coffers, he has owsen and kine, 
And ae bonnie lassie, his dautie and mine. 

She's fresh as the morning, the fairest in May; 
She's sweet as the cv'ning amang the new hay; 
As blythe and as artless as the lambs on the lea. 
And dear to my heart as the light to my e'e. 



dwells 

pick 

gold, oxen 
one, darling 



122 



BURNS 



But oh ! she's an heiress, auld Robin's a laird, 
And my daddie has nought but a cot-house and yard ; 
A wooer like me maunna hope to come speed, 
The wounds I must hide that will soon be my dead. 

The day comes to me, but delight brings me nane; 
The night comes to me, but my rest it is gane; 
I wander my lane, like a night-troubled ghaist, 
And I sigh as my heart it wad burst In my breast. 

had she but been of a lower degree, 

1 then might hae hoped she wad smiled upon me; 
O how past descriving had then been my bliss, 
As now my distraction no words can express ! 



O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast, besides be- 
ing one of the most exquisite of his songs, has a 
pathetic interest from the circumstances under 
which it was composed. During the last few 
months of his life, a young girl called Jessie Le- 
wars, sister of one of his colleagues in the excise, 
came much to his house and was of great service 
to Mrs. Burns and him in his last illness. One 
day he offered to write new verses to any tune 
she might play him. She sat down and played 
over several times the melody of an old song, be- 
ginning, 

The robin came to the wren's nest, 
And keekit in, and keekit in. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 123 

The following lines were the characteristic re- 
sult : 

O, WERT THOU IN THE CAULD BLAST 

O, wert thou in the cauld blast, 

On yonder lea, on yonder lea. 
My plaidie to the angry airt, 

I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee. 
Or did misfortune's bitter storms 

Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, 
Thy bield should be my bosom, 

To share it a', to share it a'. 

Or were I in the wildest waste, 

Sae black and bare, sae black and bare, 
The desert were a paradise. 

If thou wert there, if thou wert there. 
Or were I monarch o' the globe, 

Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign. 
The brightest jewel in my crown 

Wad be my queen, wad be my queen. 

This group may well close with his great hymn 
of general allegiance to the sex. 



cold 



direction 



shelter 



GREEN GROW THE RASHES 

Green grow the rashes, O, 
Green grow the rashes, O; 

The sweetest hours that e'er I spend. 
Are spent amang the lasses, O! 



124 BURNS 

There's nought but care on ev'ry han', 
In ev'ry hour that passes, O; 

What signifies the life o' man, 
An* 'twere na for the lasses, O. 

The warly race may riches chase. 
An' riches still may fly them, O ; 

An' tho' at last they catch them fast. 
Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O. 

But gie me a canny hour at e'en, 
My arms about my dearie, O; 

An' warly cares, an' warly men. 
May a' gae tapsalteerie, O! 

For you sae douce, ye sneer at this, 
Ye're nought but senseless asses, O : 

The wisest man the warl' e'er saw, 
He dearly lov'd the lasses, O. 

Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears 
Her noblest work she classes, O; 

Her prentice han' she tried on man. 
An' then she made the lasses, O. 



Equally personal, but not connected with love, 
are a few autobiographical poems of which the 
following are typical. The third of these, though 
prosaic enough, is interesting as perhaps Burns's 
most elaborate summing up of the philosophy of 
his own career. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 125 



THERE WAS A LAD 



There was a lad was born in Kyle, 
But whatna day o' whatna style 
I doubt it's hardly worth the while 
To be sae nice wi' Robin. 



what 



Robin was a rovin* boy, 
Rantin' rovin*, rantin' rovin*; 

Robin was a rovin' boy, 
Rantin* rovin' Robin. 



roystenng 



Our monarch's hindmost year but ane 
Was five-and-twenty days begun, 
'Twas then a blast o' Janwar win' 
Blew hansel in on Robin. 



his first gift 



The gossip keekit in his loof, peeped, palm 

Quo' scho, 'Wha lives will see the proof, Quoth she 

This waly boy will be nae coof, choice, dolt 

I think we'll ca' him Robin. call 



'He'll hae misfortunes great an' sma'. 
But aye a heart aboon them a'; 
He'll be a credit till us a', 
We'll a* be proud o* Robin. 



above 
to 



*But sure as three times three mak nine, 

I see by ilka score and line, each 

This chap will dearly like our kin*, sex 

So leeze me on thee, Robin. blessings on 



126 



BURNS 



sir 

make, aspread 

faults, worse 



*Guid faith,' quo' scho, 'I doubt you, stir, 
Ye gar the lasses lie aspar, 
But twenty fauts ye may hae waur, 
So blessings on thee, Robin!* 



CONTENTED WI' LITTLE 

cheerful Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair, 

meet Whene'er I forgather wi' Sorrow and Care, 

spank I gie them a skelp, as they're creepin' alang, 

bowl of good ale Wi' a cog o' gude swats, and an auld Scottish sang. 

sometimes I whyles claw the elbow o' troublesome thought; 

soldier, fight But man is a soger, and life is a faught : 

pocket My mirth and gude humour are coin in my pouch, 

dare And my freedom's my lairdship nae monarch daur touch. 

twelvemonth, lot A towmond o' trouble, should that be my fa', 
solders A night o' gude fellowship sowthers it a'; 

When at the blythe end of our journey at last, 
Who the devil Wha the deil ever thinks o' the road he has past? 

stumble, stagger Blind Chance, let her snapper and stoyte on her way, 
Be't to me, be't frae me, e'en let the jad gae: 
Come ease or come travail, come pleasure or pain, 
My warst word is — 'Welcome, and welcome again 1' 



MY FATHER WAS A FARMER 

My Father was a Farmer upon the Carrick border, O, 

And carefully he bred me in decency and order, O; 

He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne'er a far- 
thing, O, 

For without an honest manly heart, no man was worth 
regarding, O. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 127 

Then out into the world my course I did determine, O; 

Tho' to be rich was not my wish, yet to be great was 
charming, O: 

My talents they were not the worst, nor yet my educa- 
tion, O; 

Resolv'd was I, at least to try, to mend my situation, O. 

In many a way, and vain essay, I courted Fortune's fa- 
vour, O : 

Some cause unseen still stept between to frustrate each 
endeavour, O ; 

Sometimes by foes I was o'erpower'd, sometimes by 
friends forsaken, O; 

And when my hope was at the top, I still was worst mis- 
taken, O. 

Then sore harass'd, and tir'd at last, with Fortune's vain 
delusion, O, 

I dropt my schemes, like idle dreams, and came to this 
conclusion, O — 

The past was bad, and the future hid; its good or ill un- 
tried, O; 

But the present hour was in my pow'r, and so I would 
enjoy it, O. 

No help, nor hope, nor view had I, nor person to be- 
friend me, O; 

So I must toil, and sweat and broil, and labour to sus- 
tain me, O ; 

To plough and sow, to reap and mow, my father bred me 
early, O ; 

For one, he said, to labour bred, was a match for For- 
tune fairly, O. 



128 BURNS 

Thus all obscure, unknown, and poor, thro* life I'm 

doom'd to wander, O, 
Till down my weary bones I lay in everlasting slumber, O ; 
No view nor care, but shun whate'er might breed me pain 

or sorrow, O, 
I live to-day as well's I may, regardless of to-morrow, O. 

But cheerful still, I am as well as a monarch in a pal- 
ace, O. 

Tho' Fortune's frown still hunts me down, with all her 
wonted malice, O; 

I make indeed my daily bread, but ne'er can make it far- 
ther, O; 

But, as daily bread is all I need, I do not much regard 
her, O. 

When sometimes by my labour I earn a little money, O, 
Some unforeseen misfortune comes generally upon me, O — 
Mischance, mistake, or by neglect, or my good-natur'd 

folly, O; 
But come what will, I've sworn it still, I'll ne'er be mel- 
ancholy, O. 

All you who follow wealth and power with unremitting 

ardour, O, 
The more in this you look for bliss, you leave your view 

the farther, O; 
Had you the wealth Potosi boasts, or nations to adore 

you, O, 
A cheerful honest-hearted clown I will prefer before you, O. 

The stress laid upon that part of Bums's pro- 
duction which has relation, near or remote, to 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 129 

his personal experiences with women is, in the 
current estimate, somewhat disproportionate. A 
surprisingly large number of his most effective 
songs are purely dramatic, are placed in the 
mouth of a man who is clearly not the poet, or, 
more frequently, in the mouth of a woman. 
There is little evidence that Burns would have 
been capable of sustained dramatic composition; 
on the other hand, he was far from being limited 
to purely personal lyric utterance. His versatil- 
ity in giving expression to the amorous moods 
of the other sex is almost as great as in direct 
confession. A group of these dramatic lyrics 
will demonstrate this. 



O FOR ANE AN' TWENTY, TAM! 

An' O for ane an' twenty, Tarn ! 

An' hey, sweet ane an' twenty, Taml 
I'll learn my kin a rattlin' sang, teach 

An' I saw ane an' twenty, Tarn. If 

They snool me sair, and hand me down, snub, sorely, hold 

An' gar me look like bluntie. Tarn ! make, a fool 

But three short years will soon wheel roun'. 
An* then comes ane an' twenty, Tam. 



130 BURNS 

A gleib o' Ian', a claut o' gear, 
Was left me by my auntie, Tarn; 

At kith or kin I need na spier. 
An' I saw ane and twenty, Tam. 

They'll hae me wed a wealthy coof, 
Tho* I mysel* hae plenty, Tam ; 

But hear'st thou, laddie ? there's my loof, 
I'm thine at ane and twenty, Tam I 



YE BANKS AND BRAES 
(Second Version) 

Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon, 
How can ye blume sae fair? 

How can ye chant, ye little birds, 
And I sae fu* o' care? 

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonnie bird, 

That sings upon the bough; 
Thou minds me o' the happy days, 

When my fause luve was true. 

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonnie bird, 

That sings beside thy mate; 
For sae I sat, and sae I sang, 

And wist na o* my fate. 



Aft hae I rov'd by bonnie Doon, 
To see the wood-bine twine. 

And ilka bird sang o' its love, 
And sae did I o' mine. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 131 

Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose 

Frae off its thorny tree: 
But my fause luver staw my rose, stole 

And left the thorn wi' me. 

(Third Version) 

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon, 

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair? 
How can ye chant, ye little birds, 

And I sae weary fu' o' care? 
Thou'lt break my heart, thou warbHng bird, 

That wantons thro' the flowering thorn ; 
Thou minds me o' departed joys. 

Departed never to return. 

Aft hae I rov'd by bonnie Doon, 

To see the rose and woodbine twine; 
And ilka bird sang o' its love, 

And fondly sae did I o' mine. 
Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose, 

Fu' sweet upoa its thorny tree; 
And my fause lover staw my rose, stole 

But ah! he left the thorn wi' me. 



SIMMER'S A PLEASANT TIME 

Simmer's a pleasant time, 

Flow'rs of ev'ry colour; 
The water rins o'er the heugh, crag 

And I long for my true lover. 



132 



BURNS 



waking 



superstitiously 
afraid 



eyes, weeping 



Ay waukin O, 

Waukin still and wearie: 
Sleep I can get nane 

For thinking on my dearie. 

When I sleep I dream, 

When I wauk I'm eerie ; 
Sleep I can get nane 

For thinking on my dearie. 

Lanely night comes on, 
A' the lave are sleeping; 

I think on my bonnie lad 
And I bleer my een with greetin* 



WHISTLE, AND I'LL COME TO YE, MY LAD 



take care 
gate, ajar 
then 



Go, fly 
glance 



O whistle, and I'll come to ye, my lad ; 
O whistle, and I'll come to ye, my lad : 
Tho' father and mither and a' should gae mad, 
O whistle, and I'll come to ye, my lad. 

But warily tent, when ye come to court me, 
And come na unless the back-yett be a-jee; 
Syne up the back-stile, and let naebody see. 
And come as ye were na comin' to me. 
And come as ye were na comin' to me. 

At kirk, or at market, whene'er ye meet me, 
Gang by me as tho* that ye car'd na a flee : 
But steal me a blink o* your bonnie black e*e. 
Yet look as ye were na lookin' at me. 
Yet look as ye were na lookin* at me. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 133 



Aye vow and protest that ye care na for me, 
And whiles ye may lightly my beauty a wee ; 
But court na anither, tho' jokin' ye be, 
For fear that she wyle your fancy frae me. 
For fear that she wyle your fancy frae me. 



slight 



beguile 



TAM GLEN 



My heart Is a breaking, dear tittie, 
Some counsel unto me come len', 

To anger them a' is a pity; 
But what will I do wi' Tam Glen? 



sister 



I'm thinking, wi* sic a braw fellow. 
In poortith I might mak a fen'; 

What care I in riches to wallow, 
If I maunna marry Tam Glen? 



fine 

poverty, shift 



There's Lowrie the laird o' Dumeller, 
*Guid-day to you' — brute ! he comes ben ; 

He brags and he blaws o' his siller, 

But when will he dance like Tam Glen? 



money 



My minnie does constantly deave me. 
And bids me beware o' young men ; 

They flatter, she says, to deceive me; 
But wha can think sae o* Tam Glen? 



mother, deafen 



My daddie says, gin I'll forsake him. 
He'll gie me guid hunder marks ten : 

But, if it's ordain'd I maun take him, 
O wha will I get but Tam Glen? 



if 

hundred 



134 



BURNS 



Last night Yestreen at the Valentine's dealing, 

mouth gave a leap My heart to my mou gied a sten: 

For thrice I drew ane without failing, 
And thrice it was written, 'Tarn Glen/ 

watching The last Halloween I was waukin' 

drenched chemise- My droukit sark-sleeve,^ as ye ken ; 

His likeness cam up the house stalkin' — 
trousers And the very grey breeks o' Tam Glen I 



give 
If 

love 



Come, counsel, dear tittie, don't tarry; 

I'll gie you my bonnie black hen, 
Gif ye will advise me to marry . 

The lad I lo'e dearly, Tam Glen. 



THE RANTIN' DOG THE DADDIE O'T 



baby-clothes 
care for 

of it 



O wha my babie-clouts will buy? 
Wha will tent me when I cry? 
Wha will kiss me whare I lie? — 
The rantin' dog the daddie o't. 



fault 

ale for the mid- 
wife 
name it 



Wha will own he did the faut? 
Wha will buy my groanin' maut? 
Wha will tell me how to ca't? 
The rantin' dog the daddie o't. 



stool of repent- 
ance 



Give 



When I mount the creepie-chair, 
Wha will sit beside me there? 
Gie me Rob, I seek nae mair, — 
The rantin' dog the daddie o't. 



1 See note 14 on Halloween, p. 218. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 135 



Wha will crack to me my lane? 
Wha will mak me fidgin' fain? 
Wha will kiss me o'er again? — 
The rantin' dog the daddie o't. 



chat, alone 

tingling with 
fondness 



LAST MAY A BRAW WOOER 



Last May a braw wooer cam down the lang glen, 
And sair wi' his love he did deave me : 

I said there was naething I hated like men — 
The deuce gae wi'm to believe me, believe me, 
The deuce gae wi'm to beHeve me. 



fine 

sorely, deafen 

go with him 



He spak o' the darts in my bonnie black een, 
And vow'd for my love he was dying; 

I said he might die when he liked for Jean ; 
The Lord forgie me for lying, for lying, 
The Lord forgie me for lying ! 



A weel-stocked mailen, himsel' for the laird, 
And marriage aff-hand, were his proffers: 

I never loot on that I kend it, or car'd ; 
But thought I might hae waur offers, waur offers, 
But thought I might hae waur offers. 



farm 



admitted 
worse 



But what wad ye think? In a fortnight or less, 
The deil tak his taste to gae near her ! 

He up the lang loan to my black cousin Bess, 

Guess ye how, the jad ! I could bear her, could bear her, 
Guess ye how, the jad! I could bear her. 



devil 
lane 



136 



BURNS 



next, fretted 
fair 

stared, wizard 



shoulder, gave, 
glance 



But a' the niest week as I petted wi* care, 
I gaed to the tryst o' Dalgarnock ; 

And wha but my fine fickle lover was there? 
I glowr'd as I'd seen a warlock, a warlock, 
I glowr'd as I'd seen a warlock. 

But owre my left shouther I gae him a blink, 
Lest neebors might say I was saucy; 

My wooer he caper'd as he'd been in drink, 
And vow'd I was his dear lassie, dear lassie. 
And vow'd I was his dear lassie. 



asked, kindly 

If 

shoes, ill-shaped 



I spier'd for my cousin fu' couthy and sweet, 

Gin she had recover'd her hearin', 
And how her new shoon fit her auld shachl't feet — 

But, heavens ! how he fell a swearin' a swearin*. 

But, heavens! how he fell a swearin'. 



He begged for gudesake I wad be his wife, 
Or else I wad kill him wi' sorrow : 

So e'en to preserve the poor body in life, 

I think I maun wed him to-morrow, to-morrow, 
I think I maun wed him to-morrow. 



FOR THE SAKE O' SOMEBODY 

My heart is sair, I dare na tell, 

My heart is sair for somebody; 

I could wake a winter night. 

For the sake o* somebody! 

Oh-hon ! for somebody ! 

Oh-hey ! for somebody ! 

I could range the world around, 

For the sake o* somebody. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 137 

Ye powers that smile on virtuous love, 

O, sweetly smile on somebody! 
Frae ilka danger keep him free, 
And send me safe my somebody. 
Oh-hon! for somebody! 
Oh-hey ! for somebody ! 
I wad do — what wad I not? 
For the sake o' somebody! 



OPEN THE DOOR TO ME, O! 

Oh, open the door, some pity to shew, 

Oh, open the door to me, O 1 
Tho' thou hast been false, I'll ever prove true, 

Oh, open the door to me, O! 

Cauld is the blast upon my pale cheek, 

But caulder thy love for me, O! 
The frost, that freezes the life at my heart, 

Is nought to my pains frae thee, O! 

The wan moon is setting behind the white wave. 

And time is setting with me, O! 
False friends, false love, farewell ! for mair 

I'll ne'er trouble them nor thee, O! 

She has open'd the door, she has open'd it wide ; 

She sees his pale corse on the plain, O ! 
'My true love !' she cried, and sank down by his side, 

Never to rise again, O! 



every 



138 



BURNS 



WANDERING WILLIE 

Here awa, there awa, wandering Willie, 
Here awa, there awa, hand awa hame; 

Come to my bosom, my ae only dearie. 
Tell me thou bring'st me my Willie the same. 

Loud tho* the winter blew cauld at our parting, 
'Twas na the blast brought the tear in my e'e ; 

Welcome now, Simmer, and welcome, my Willie, 
The Simmer to Nature, my Willie to me! 

Rest, ye wild storms, in the cave o' your slumbers 
How your dread howling a lover alarms ! 

Wauken, ye breezes, row gently, ye billows, 
And waft my dear laddie ance mair to my arms. 

But oh, if he's faithless, and minds na his Nannie, 
Flow still between us, thou wide-roaring main ; 

May I never see it, may I never trow it, 
But, dying, believe that my Willie's my ain ! 



HOW LANG AND DREARY 

How lang and dreary is the night, 
When I am frae my dearie! 

I restless lie frae e'en to morn, 
Tho' I were ne'er sae weary. 

For O, her lanely nights are lang; 

And O, her dreams are eerie; 
And O, her widow'd heart is sair, 

That's absent frae her dearie. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 139 

When I think on the lightsome days 

I spent wi' thee, my dearie, 
And now that seas between us roar, 

How can I be but eerie! 



How slow ye move, ye heavy hours; 

The joyless day how drearie! 
It wasna sae ye glinted by, 

When I was wi' my dearie. 



glanced 



THE BONNIE LAD THAT'S FAR AWA 



O how can I be blithe and glad, 
Or how can I gang brisk and braw, 

When the bonnie lad that I lo'e best 
Is o'er the hills and far awa? 



go, fine 



It's no the frosty winter wind, 
It's no the driving drift and snaw 

But aye the tear comes in my e'e, 
To think on him that's far awa. 



My father pat me frae his door. 
My friends they hae disown'd me a' 

But I hae ane will tak my part, 
The bonnie lad that's far awa. 



put 



have one 



A pair o' gloves he bought to me, 
And silken snoods he gae me twa; 

And I will wear them for his sake, 
The bonnie lad that's far awa, 



fillets, gave 



140 



BURNS 



O weary winter soon will pass, 
And spring will deed the birken shaw 

And my young babie will be born, 
And he'll be hame that's far awa. 



BRAW BRAW LADS 

Braw braw lads on Yarrow braes, 
That wander thro' the blooming heather ; 

But Yarrow braes nor Ettrick shaws 
Can match the lads o' Gala Water. 

But there is ane, a secret ane, 
Aboon them a' I lo'e him better; 

And I'll be his, and he'll be mine, 
The bonnie lad o' Gala Water. 

Altho' his daddie was nae laird, 
And tho' I hae nae meikle tocher. 

Yet rich in kindest, truest love, 
We'll tent our flocks by Gala Water. 

It ne*er was wealth, it ne'er was wealth. 
That coft contentment, peace, and pleasure ; 

The bands and bliss o* mutual love, 
O that's the chief est warld's treasure! 



MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS 

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here ; 
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer ; 
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe, 
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 141 

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, 
The birth-place of valour, the country of worth ; 
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove. 
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love. 

Farewell to the mountains, high cover'd with snow ; 
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below ; 
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods ; 
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods. 

The foregoing are all placed in the mouths of 
girls, and it is difficult to deny that they ring as 
true as the songs that are known to have sprung 
from the poet's direct experience. Scarcely less 
notable than their sincerity is their variety. 
Pathos of desertion, gay defiance of opposition, 
yearning in absence, confession of coquetry, joy- 
ous confession of affection returned — these are 
only a few of the phases of woman's love ren- 
dered here with a felicity that leaves nothing to 
be desired. What woman has so interpreted the 
feelings of her sex ? 

The next two express a girl's repugnance at the 
thought of marriage with an old man; and the 
two following form a pair treating the same 
theme, one from the girl's point of view, the 
other from the lover's. The later verses of My 
Love She's hut a Lassie Yet, however, though 



142 



BURNS 



full of vivacity, have so little to do with the first 
or with one another that the song seems to be a 
collection of scraps held together by a common 
melody. 

WHAT CAN A YOUNG LASSIE 

What can a young lassie, what shall a young lassie, 
What can a young lassie do wi' an auld man? 
mother Bad luck on the penny that tempted my minnie 

money To sell her poor Jenny for siller an' Ian' ! 

He's always compleenin' frae mornin' to e'enin*, 
coughs, limps He hoasts and he hirples the weary day lang : 

stupid, benumbed He's doylt and he's dozin, his bluid it is frozen, 

O, dreary's the night wi* a crazy auld man ! 

He hums and he hankers, he frets and he cankers, 

I never can please him do a' that I can ; 
He's peevish, and jealous of a' the young fellows: 
^°® O, dool on the day I met wi' an auld man ! 

My auld auntie Katie upon me takes pity, 
I'll do my endeavour to follow her plan; 

I'll cross him and rack him, until I heart-break him, 
And then his auld brass will buy me a new pan. 



lame 



TO DAUNTON ME 

The blude-red rose at Yule may blaw, 
The simmer lilies bloom in snaw. 
The frost may freeze the deepest sea; 
But an auld man shall never daunton me. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 143 



To daunton me, and me sae young, 
Wi' his fause heart and flatt'ring tongue, 
That is the thing you ne'er shall see ; 
For an auld man shall never daunton me. 



false 



For a' his meal and a' his maut, 
For a' his fresh beef and his saut, 
For a' his gold and white monie, 
An auld man shall never daunton me. 



malt 
salt 



His gear may buy him kye and yowes, 
His gear may buy him glens and knowes ; 
But me he shall not buy nor fee, 
For an auld man shall never daunton me. 



wealth, cows, 

ewes 
knolls 

hire 



He hirples twa fauld as he dow, 1^"^p« <i°"b^«' ^^" 

Wi' his teethless gab and his auld held pow, "^o"*^' bald head 

And the rain rains dov^n frae his red bleer'd e'e — 
That auld man shall never daunton me. 



I'M OWRE YOUNG TO MARRY YET 



I am my mammie's ae bairn, 
Wi' unco folk I weary, Sir; 

And lying in a man's bed, 

I'm fley'd wad mak me eerie, Sir. 



only child 
strange 

frightened, scared 



I'm owre young, I'm owre young, 
I'm owre young to marry yet ; 

I'm owre young, 'twad be a sin 
To tak me frae my mammie yet. 



too 



144 



BURNS 



[My mammie coft me a new gown, 
The kirk maun hae the gracing o't ; 

Were I to lie wi' you, kind Sir, 
I'm fear'd ye'd spoil the lacing o't.] 

Hallowmas is come and gane, 
The nights are lang in winter, Sir ; 

And you an' I in ae bed, 

In troth I dare na venture, Sir. 

Fu' loud and shrill the frosty wind 
Blaws thro' the leafless timmer. Sir; 

But if ye come this gate again, 
I'll aulder be gin simmer, Sir. 



MY LOVE SHE'S BUT A LASSIE YET 

My love she's but a lassie yet ; 

My love she's but a lassie yet ; 
We'll let her stand a year or twa. 

She'll no be half sae saucy yet. 

I rue the day I sought her, O, 
I rue the day I sought her, O; 

Wha gets her needs na say he's woo'd, 
But he may say he's bought her, O ! 



Come, draw a drap o' the best o't yet; 

Come, draw a drap o' the best o't yet ; 
Gae seek for pleasure where ye will, 

But here I never miss'd it yet. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 145 

[We're a' dry wi' drinking o't; 

We're a' dry wi' drinking o't ; 
The minister kiss'd the fiddler's wife, 

An* could na preach for thinkin' o't.] 

Bessy and Her Spinnin -Wheel stands by itself 
as the rendering of the mood of contented soH- 
tude, and is further remarkable for its charming 
verses of natural description. John Anderson 
My Jo is the classical expression of love in age, 
inimitable in its simplicity and tenderness. The 
two following poems supply a humorous contrast. 



BESSY AND HER SPINNIN'-WHEEL 

O leeze me on my spinnin'-wheel, 
O leeze me on my rock and reel ; 
Frae tap to tae that deeds me bien, 
And haps me fiel and warm at e'en ! 
I'll set me down and sing and spin, 
While laigh descends the simmer sun, 
Blest wi' content, and milk and meal — 
O leeze me on my spinnin'-wheel. 

On ilka hand the burnies trot, 
And meet below my theekit cot ; 
The scented birk and hawthorn white 
Across the pool their arms unite, 
Alike to screen the birdie's nest, 
And little fishes' caller rest : 
The sun blinks kindly in the biel'. 
Where blythe I turn my spinnin'-wheel. 



Blessings on 

distaff 

top to toe, clothes, 

comfortably 
wraps, well 



low 



every, brooklets 

thatched 

Tjirch 



cool 
shelter 



146 



BURNS 



On lofty aiks the cushats wail, 
And Echo cons the doolfu' tale; 
The lintwhites in the hazel braes, 
Delighted, rival ither's lays : 
The craik amang the claver hay, 
The paitrick whirrin' o'er the ley, 
The swallow jinkin' round my shiel, 
Amuse me at my spinnin'-wheel. 

Wi* sma' to sell, and less to buy, 
Aboon distress, below envy, 
O wha wad leave this humble state. 
For a' the pride of a' the great? 
Amid their flaring, idle toys. 
Amid their cumbrous, dinsome joys. 
Can they the peace and pleasure feel 
Of Bessy at her spinnin'-wheel? 

JOHN ANDERSON, MY JO 



John Anderson my jo, John, 

When we were first acquent. 
Your locks were like the raven. 

Your bonnie brow was brent ; 
But now your brow is held, John, 

Your locks are like the snaw ; 
But blessings on your frosty pow, 

John Anderson, my jo. 

John Anderson my jo, John, 
We clamb the hill thegither; 

And mony a canty day, John, 
We've had wi' ane anither : 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 147 



Now we maun totter down, John, 
And hand in hand we'll go, 

And sleep thegither at the foot, 
John Anderson, my jo. 



together 



THE WEARY FUND O' TOW 



The weary pund, the weary pund, 
The weary pund o* tow ; 

I think my wife will end her life 
Before she spin her tow. 



pound 
yarn 



I bought my wife a stane o' lint 
As gude as e'er did grow; 

And a' that she has made o* that^ 
Is ae poor pund o' tow. 



stone, flax 
good 



There sat a bottle in a bole, 

Beyond the ingle lowe, 
And aye she took the tither souk 

To drouk the stowrie tow. 



niche 

chimney flame 
other suck 
drench, dusty 



Quoth I, 'For shame, ye dirty dame, 
Gae spin your tap o' tow!' 

She took the rock, and wi' a knock 
She brak it o'er my pow. 



bunch 
distaff 
pate 



At last her feet — I sang to see't — 
Gaed foremost o'er the knowe; 

And or I wad anither jad, 
I'll wallop in a tow. 



went, hill 
ere, wed 
kick, rope 



148 



BURNS 



huckling-comb 
patching 
knock with 



O MERRY HAE I BEEN 

O, merry hae I been teethin' a heckle. 

An' merry hae I been shapin' a spoon; 
O, merry hae I been cloutin' a kettle, 

An* kissin' my Katie when a' was done. 
O, a' the lang day I ca' at my hammer, 

An' a' the lang day I whistle and sing, 
O, a' the lang night I cuddle my kimmer. 

An' a' the lang night am as happy's a king. 



sorrow, earnings 



shroud 



Bitter in dool I lickit my winnins 

O' marrying Bess, to gie her a slave: 
Bless'd be the hour she cool'd in her linens, 

And blythe be the bird that sings on her grave. 
Come to my arms, my Katie, my Katie, 

An* come to my arms, an* kiss me again ! 
Drucken or sober, here's to thee, Katie! 

And bless'd be the day I did it again. 



Had I the Wyte is, we may hope, also purely 
imaginative drama; it is certainly vividly imag- 
ined and carried through with a delightful mix- 
ture of sympathy and humorous detachment. 



blame 

highroad 
lane 



HAD I THE WYTE? 

Had I the wyte, had I the wyte, 
Had I the wyte ? she bade me ! 

She watch'd me by the hie-gate side, 
And up the loan she shaw'd me; 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 149 



And when I wadna venture in, 
A coward loon she ca'd me: 

Had kirk and state been in the gate, 
I lighted when she bade me. 



rascal 

way (opposing) 



Sae craftilie she took me ben. 

And bade me make nae clatter; 
Tor our ramgunshoch glum gudeman 

Is o'er ayont the water :* 
Whae'er shall say I wanted grace. 

When I did kiss and daut her. 
Let him be planted in my place, 

Syne say I was the fautor. 



surly 
beyond 

pet 

Then, transgressor 



Could I for shame, could I for shame. 

Could I for shame refused her? 
And wadna manhood been to blame. 

Had I unkindly used her? 
He clawed her wi' the ripplin-kame, 

And blae and bluidy bruised her ; 
When sic a husband was frae hame, 

What wife but had excused her? 



wool-corab 
blue 



I dighted ay her een sae blue. 

And bann'd the cruel randy; 
And weel I wat her willing mou* 

Was e'en like sugar-candy. 
At gloamin-shot it was, I trow, 

I lighted, on the Monday; 
But I cam through the Tysday's dew, 

To wanton Willie's brandy. 



wiped, eyes 
cursed, scoundrel 
wot, mouth 



Tuesday's 



150 



BURNS 



Macpherson' s Farewell, made famous by Car- 
lyle's appreciation, is a glorified version of the 
"Dying Words" of a condemned bandit, such as 
were famiHar in broadsides after every notorious 
execution. Part of the refrain is old. One may 
imagine The Highland Balou the lullaby of Mac- 
pherson's child. 

MACPHERSON'S FAREWELL 

Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong, 

The wretch's destinie ! 
Macpherson's time will not be long 

On yonder gallows tree. 

Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, 

Sae dauntingly gaed he; 
He played a spring and danced it round, 

Below the gallows tree. 

Oh, what is death but parting breath? 

On mony a bloody plain 
I've dared his face, and in his place 

I scorn him yet again ! 

Untie these bands from off my hands, 

And bring to me my sword, 
And there's no a man in all Scotland, 

But I'll brave him at a word. 

I've lived a life of sturt and strife; 

I die by treacherie: 
It burns my heart I must depart 

And not avenged be, 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 151 

Now farewell light, thou sunshine bright, 

And all beneath the sky! 
May coward shame distain his name, 

The wretch that dares not die 1 



THE HIGHLAND BALOU 



Hee balou ! my sweet wee Donald, 
Picture o' the great Clanronald ; 
Brawlie kens our wanton chief 
Wha got my young Highland thief. 



Lullaby 
Finely knows 



Leeze me on thy bonnie craigie ! 
An thou live, thou'll steal a naigie: 
Travel the country thro' and thro', 
And bring hame a Carlisle cow. 



Blessings on, 

throat 
If, little nag 



Thro* the Lawlands, o'er the border, 
Weel, my babie, may thou furder : 
Herry the louns o' the laigh countree, 
Syne to the Highlands hame to me. 



succeed 

Harry, rascals, 
low 

Then 



Distinct from either of the foregoing groups 
are several songs in narrative form, told as a 
rule from the point of view of an onlooker, but 
hardly inferior to the others in vitality. In them 
the personal or dramatic emotion is replaced by 
a keen sense of the humor of the situation. 



152 



BURNS 



DUNCAN GRAY 



drunk 



cast, high 

askance, very 

skittish 
Made, aloof 



Duncan Gray came here to woo, 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't, 
On blythe Yule night when we were fou. 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't. 
Maggie coost her head fu' heigh, 
Look'd asklent and unco skeigh, 
Cart poor Duncan stand abeigh ; 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't. 



wheedled 



Wept, eyes both 
leaping, waterfall 



Duncan fleech'd, and Duncan pray'd ; 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't, 
Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig, 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't. 
t)uncan sigh'd baith out and in, 
Grat his een baith bleer't and bHn*, 
Spak o* lowpin o'er a linn ; 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't. 



sore, endure 



hussy 



Time and chance are but a tide. 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't, 

Slighted love is sair to bide. 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't. 

'Shall I, like a fool,' quoth he, 

'For a haughty hizzie die? 

She may gae to — France for mel* 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't. 



whole 



How it comes let doctors tell. 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't, 

Meg grew sick as he grew haill. 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 153 



Something in her bosom wrings, 
For relief a sigh she brings ; 
And O, her een they spak sic things 1 
Ha, ha, the wooing o't. 



Duncan was a lad o' grace, 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't, 
Maggie's was a piteous case, 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't. 
Duncan could na be her death, 
Swelling pity smoor'd his wrath; 
Now they're crouse and cantie baith! 

Ha, ha, the wooing o't. 



smothered 
lively, cheerful 



DUNCAN DAVISON 

There was a lass, they ca'd her Meg, 

And she held o'er the moors to spin; 
There was a lad that follow'd her, 

They ca'd him Duncan Davison. 
The moor was driegh, and Meg was skiegh, 

Her favour Duncan could na win ; 
For wi' the rock she wad him knock, 

And ay she shook the temper-pin. 

As o'er the moor they lightly foor, 

A burn was clear, a glen was green. 
Upon the banks they eased their shanks. 

And aye she set the wheel between: 
But Duncan swore a haly aith. 

That Meg should be a bride the morn ; 
Then Meg took up her spinnin* graith. 

And flung them a* out o'er the burn. 



called 



dull, skittish 



distaff 

regulating pin of 
the spinning- 
wheel 



holy oath 

implements 
»cro89 



154 



BURNS 



build 



aside 



We will big a wee, wee house, 

And we will live like King and Queen, 
Sae blythe and merry's we will be 

When ye set by the wheel at e'en. 
A man may drink and no be drunk; 

A man may fight and no be slain; 
A man may kiss a bonnie lass. 

And aye be welcome back again. 



THE DE'IL'S AWA WF TH' EXCISEMAN 



every, Mahomet 
(Devil) 



The De'il cam fiddling thro' the town, 
And danced awa wi' th' Exciseman; 

And ilka wife cried 'Auld Mahoun, 
I wish you luck o' your prize, man. 



malt 



big 



We'll mak our maut, and we'll brew our drink, 
We'll laugh, and sing, and rejoice, man; 

And mony braw thanks to the muckle black De'il 
That danced awa wi' th' Exciseman. 



dance tunes 
one 



There's threesome reels, there's foursome reels, 
There's hornpipes and strathspeys, man; 

But the ae best dance e'er cam to the Ian', 
Was — The De'iVs awa wi' th' Exciseman. 



COMIN' THROUGH THE RYE 



draggled 



Comin' thro' the rye, poor body, 

Comin' thro' the rye, 
She draigl't a' her petticoatie, 

Comin' thro* the rye. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 155 



Gin a body meet a body 
Comin' thro' the rye ; 

Gin a body kiss a body, 
Need a body cry? 

Gin a body meet a body 
Comin' thro' the glen; 

Gin a body kiss a body, 
Need the v/arld ken? 

O, Jenny's a* weet, poor body; 

Jenny's seldom dry; 
She draigl't a' her petticoatie, 

Comin' thro* the rye. 



If 



all wet 



THE DEUK'S DANG O'ER MY DADDIE 

The bairns gat out wi' an unco shout, 

The deuk's dang o'er my daddie, O ! 
The fient ma care, quo' the feirie auld wife, 

He was but a paidlin body, O ! 
He paidles out, and he paidles in, 

An' he paidles late and early, O ; 
This seven lang years I hae lien by his side, 

An' he is but a fusionless carlie, O. 

O, baud your tongue, my feirie auld wife, 

O, baud your tongue now, Nansie, O : 
I've seen the day, and sae hae ye. 

Ye wad na been sae donsie, O ; 
Fve seen the day ye butter'd my brose, 

And cuddl'd me late and earlie, O; 
But downa-do's come o'er me now, 

And, oh, I find it sairly, 1 



children, surpris- 
ing 
duck has knocked 

devil may, lusty 

tottering creature 



pithless old fellow 
hold 



would not have, 

testy 
oatmeal and hot 

water 



cannot-do is 
feel it sorely 



156 



BURNS 



WHA IS THAT AT MY BOWER DOOR? 

*Wha is that at my bower door?' 

*0 wha is it but Findlay ?' 
'Then gae your gate, ye'se nae be here!' 

'Indeed maun 1/ quo' Findlay. 
'What mak ye, sae Hke a thief?' 

*0, come and see,' quo' Findlay; 
'Before the morn ye'll work mischief;* 

'Indeed will I,' quo' Findlay. 

'Gif 1 rise and let you in — ' 

'Let me in,' quo' Findlay — 
*Ye'll keep me waukin wi* your din ;* 

'Indeed will I,' quo' Findlay. 
'In my bower if ye should stay — * 

'Let me stay,' quo' Findlay — , 
'I fear ye'll bide till break o' day;* 

'Indeed will I,' quo' Findlay. 

'Here this night if ye remain — ' 

'I'll remain,' quo' Findlay — , 
*I dread ye'll learn the gate again ;* 

'Indeed will I,' quo' Findlay. 
'What may pass within this bower — * 

'Let it pass,' quo' Findlay — 
*Ye maun conceal till your last hour ;* 

'Indeed will I,' quo' Findlay. 

WILLIE'S WIFE 

Willie Wastle dwalt on Tweed, 
The spot they ca'd it Linkumdoddie ; 

Willie was a wabster guid, 
Cou'd stown a clue wi' ony body. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 157 



He had a wife was dour and din, 
O, Tinkler Madgie was her mither ; 

Sic a wife as Willie had, 
I wad na gie a button for her ! 



stubborn, sallow 

Tinker 

Such 



She has an e'e, she has but ane, 

The cat has twa the very colour; 
Five rusty teeth, forbye a stump, 

A clapper tongue wad deave a miller ; 
A whiskin beard about her mou, 

Her nose and chin they threaten ither ; 
Sic a wife as Willie had, 

I wad na gie a button for her ! 



eye 

besides 
deafen 

mouth 



She's bow-hough'd, she's hem-shinn'd, 

Ae limpin leg a hand-breed shorter ; 
She's twisted right, she's twisted left, 

To balance fair in ilka quarter : 
She has a hump upon her breast, 

The twin o' that upon her shouther; 
Sic a wife as Willie had, 

I wad na gie a button for her 1 



bandy, crooked 
One, hand-breadth 

either 



Auld baudrons by the ingle sits, 

An' wi' her loof her face a-washin ; 
But Willie's wife is nae sae trig, 

She dights her grunzie wi' a hushion 
Her walie nieves like midden-creels. 

Her face wad fyle the Logan-water; 
Sic a wife as Willie had, 

I wad na gie a button for her! 



Old pussy, fireside 

palm 

trim 

wipes, snout, 

stocking-leg 
ample fists, dung 

baskets 
dirty 



158 BURNS 

The songs written by Burns in connection with 
poHtics are often lively and pointed, but they 
have little imagination, and the passing of the 
issues they dealt with has deprived them of gen- 
eral interest. Two classes of exceptions may be 
noted. He was, as we have seen, sympathetically 
interested in the French Revolution, and the fun- 
damental doctrine of Liberty, Fraternity, Equal- 
ity was cast by him into a poem which, he him- 
self said, is "not really poetry," but is admirably 
vigorous rhetoric in verse, and has become the 
classic utterance of the democratic faith. 

A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT 

Is there for honest poverty 

That hings his head, an' a' that? 
The coward slave, we pass him by, 
We dare be poor for a' that! 
For a' that, an' a' that, 

Our toils obscure, an' a' that; 
The rank is but the guinea's stamp; 
The man's the gowd for a' that. 

What tho* on hamely fare we dine, 

Wear hodden-gray, and a' that; 
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, 

A man's a man for a' that. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 159 

For a' that, an* a' that, 

Their tinsel show, an' a' that; 
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, 

Is king o' men for a' that. 



Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, 

Wha struts, and stares, an' a' that; 
Tho' hundreds worship at his word, 
He's but a coof for a' that : 
For a' that, an' a' that, 

His riband, star, and a' that, 
The man of independent mind, 
He looks and laughs at a' that. 



fellow 



dolt 



A prince can mak a belted knight, 

A marquis, duke, an' a' that ; 
But an honest man's aboon his might, 
Guid faith, he mauna fa' that! 
For a' that, an' a' that, 

Their dignities, an' a' that. 
The pith o' sense an' pride o' worth 
Are higher rank than a' that. 



above 

must not claim 



But let us pray that come it may, 

As come it will for a' that; 
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, 
May bear the <rree, an' a' that. 
For a' that, an' a' that. 

It's coming yet for a' that. 

That man to man the warld o'er 

Shall brithers be for a' that. 



first place 



160 BURNS 

Another, equally famous, sprang from his pa- 
triotic enthusiasm for the heroes of the Scottish 
war of independence, but was written with more 
than a slight consciousness of what seemed to 
him the similarity of the spirit then abroad in 
France. 

SCOTS, WHA HAE 

ROBERT BRUCe's ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY, BEFORE 
THE BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN 

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, 
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, 
Welconie to your gory bed 
Or to victorie. 

Now's the day, and now's the hour ; 
See the front o' battle lour ! 
See approach proud Edward's power — 
Chains and slaverie! 

Wha will be a traitor knave? 
Wha can fill a coward's grave? 
Wha sae base as be a slave? 
Let him turn and flee! 

Wha for Scotland's King and law 
Freedom's sword will strongly draw, 
Freeman stand, or freeman fa*? 
Let him follow me I 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 161 

By Oppression's woes and pains ! 
By your sons in servile chains ! 
We will drain our dearest veins, 
But they shall be free! 

Lay the proud usurpers low! 
Tyrants fall in every foe! 
Liberty's in every blow ! 
Let us do or die ! 

The other class of exceptions is the group of 
songs on Jacobite themes. The rebelHon led by 
Prince Charles Edward in 1745 had produced a 
considerable quantity of campaign verse, almost 
all without poetic value; but after the turmoil 
had died down and the Stuart cause was regarded 
as finally lost, there appeared in Scotland a pecul- 
iar sentimental tenderness for the picturesque 
and unfortunate family that had sunk from the 
splendors of a throne that had been theirs for 
centuries into the sordid misery of royal pau- 
perism. Burns, whose ancestors had been "out" 
in the '45, shared this sentiment, as Walter Scott 
later shared it, both realizing that it had nothing 
to do with practical politics. Out of this feeling 
there grew a considerable body of poetry, a po- 
etry full of idealistn, touched with melancholy, 
and atoning for its lack of reality by a richness 



162 BURNS 

of imaginative emotion. Burns led the way in 
this unique movement, and was worthily followed 
by such writers as Lady Nairne, James Hogg, 
and Sir Walter himself. He followed his usual 
custom of availing himself of fragments of the 
older lyrics, but as usual he polished the pebbles 
into jewels and set them in gold. Here are a few 
specimens of this poetry of a lost cause. 

IT WAS A' FOR OUR RIGHTFU' KING 

It was a' for our rightfu' King, 
We left fair Scotland's strand; 

It was a' for our rightfu' King, 
We e'er saw Irish land, 
My dear, 
We e'er saw Irish land. 

Now a' is done that men can do, 

And a' is done in vain; 
My love and native land farewell, 

For I maun cross the main, 
My dear. 

For I maun cross the main. 

He turn*d him right and round about 

Upon the Irish shore; 
And gae his bridle-reins a shake. 

With adieu for evermore, 
My dear, 

Adieu for evermore. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 163 

The sodger from the wars returns, soldier 

The sailor frae the main ; 
But I hae parted frae my love, 

Never to meet again, 

My dear, 

Never to meet again. 

When day is gane, and night is come, 

And a' folk bound to sleep, 
I think on him that's far awa'. 

The lee-lang night, and weep, live-long 

My dear, 

The lee-lang night, and weep. 

COME BOAT ME O'ER TO CHARLIE 

Come boat me o'er, come row me o'er, 

Come boat me o'er to Charlie ; 
I'll gie John Ross another bawbee, half-penny 

To boat me o'er to Charlie. 

We'll o'er the water, we'll o'er the sea, 

We'll o'er the water to Charlie; 
Come weal, come woe, we'll gather and go, 

And live or die wi' Charlie. 

I lo'e weel my Charlie's name, love 

Tho' some there be abhor him : 

But O, to see auld Nick gaun hame, going 

And Charlie's faes before him ! foes 

I swear and vow by moon and stars, 

And sun that shines so clearly, 
If I had twenty thousand lives, 

I'd die as aft for Charlie. 



164 BURNS 



THE HIGHLAND LADDIE 

The bonniest lad that e'er I saw, 

Bonnie laddie, Highland laddie, 
gaily dressed Wore a plaid and was fu' braw, 

Bonnie Highland laddie. 
On his head a bonnet blue, 

Bonnie laddie, Highland laddie. 
His royal heart was firm and true, 

Bonnie Highland laddie. 



Trumpets sound and cannons roar, 

Bonnie lassie, Lawland lassie. 
And a' the hills wi' echoes roar, 

Bonnie Lawland lassie. 
Glory, Honour, now invite, 

Bonnie lassie, Lawland lassie, 
For Freedom and my King to fight, 

Bonnie Lawland lassie. 



The sun a backward course shall take, 

Bonnie laddie, Highland laddie, 
Ere aught thy manly courage shake, 

Bonnie Highland laddie. 
Go, for yoursel procure renown, 

Bonnie laddie. Highland laddie, 
And for your lawful King his crown, 

Bonnie Highland laddie! 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 165 



BANNOCKS O' BARLEY 

Bannocks o' bear meal, Cakes, barley 

Bannocks o' barley; 
Here's to the Highlandman's 

Bannocks o' barley. 
Wha in a brulzie ^'°»^ 

Will first cry a parley? 
Never the lads wi' 

The bannocks o' barley. 

Bannocks o' bear meal, 

Bannocks o' barley; 
Here's to the lads wi* 

The bannocks o' barley; 
Wha in his wae-days w°^"^" 

Were loyal to Charlie ? 
Wha but the lads wi' 

The bannocks o' barley. 



KENMURE'S ON AND AWA 

O, Kenmure's on and awa, Willie ! 

O, Kenmure's on and awa! 
And Kenmure's lord's the bravest lord 

That ever Galloway saw. 

Success to Kenmure's band, Willie! 

Success to Kenmure's band ; 
There's no a heart that fears a Whig 

That rides by Kenmure's hand. 



166 BURNS 

Here's Kenmure's health in wine, Willie! 
Here's Kenmure's health in wine; 
blood There ne'er was a coward o' Kenmure's blude, 

Nor yet o' Gordon's line. 

O, Kenmure's lads are men, Willie! 

O, Kenmure's lads are men ; 
Their hearts and swords are metal true, 

And that their faes shall ken. 

They'll live or die wi' fame, Willie! 

They'll live or die wi' fame ; 
But soon, wi' sounding victorie, 

May Kenmure's lord come hame ! 

Here's him that's far awa, Willie! 

Here's him that's far awa; 
And here's the flower that I lo'e best — 

The rose that's like the snaw! 



THERE'LL NEVER BE PEACE TILL JAMIE COMES 
HAME 

By yon castle wa', at the close of the day, 
I heard a man sing, tho' his head it was grey: 
And as he was singing, the tears down came — 
'There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame. 

'The church is in ruins, the state is in jars, 
Delusions, oppressions, and murderous wars; 
We dare na weel say't, but we ken wha's to blame— 
There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame. 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 167 

'My seven braw sons for Jamie drew sword, handsome 

And now I greet round their green beds in the yerd ; weep, churchyard 
It brak the sweet heart o' my faithfu' auld dame — 
There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame. 



'Now life is a burden that bows me down, 
Sin' I tint my bairns, and he tint his crown ; 
But till my last moment my words are the same- 
There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame.' 



lost, children 



I HAE BEEN AT CROOKIEDEN 



I hae been at Crookieden — 

My bonie laddie, Highland laddie! 
Viewing Willie and his men — 

My bonie laddie. Highland laddie! 
There our foes that burnt and slew — 

My bonie laddie, Highland laddie! 
There at last they gat their due — 

My bonie laddie. Highland laddie! 



Hell 



Duke of Cumber- 
land 



Satan sits in his black neuk — 

My bonie laddie, Highland laddie! 
Breaking sticks to roast the Duke — 

My bonie laddie. Highland laddie! 
The bloody monster gae a yell — 

My bonie laddie. Highland laddie! 
And loud the laugh gaed round a' Hell- 

My bonie laddie, Highland laddie! 



gave 



went 



168 BURNS 



CHARLIE HE'S MY DARLING 

'Twas on a Monday morning 

Right early in the year, 
That Charhe came to our town — 

The Young Chevalier! 

CHORUS , 

An' Charlie he's my darling, 
My darling, my darling, 

Charlie he's my darling — 
The Young Chevalier ! 

As he was walking up the street 

The city for to view, 
O, there he spied a bonie lass 

The window looking thro 1 

Sae light's he jumped up the stair, 

And tirl'd at the pin ; 
And wha sae ready as hersel* 

To let the laddie in! 

He set his Jenny on his knee, 
All in his Highland dress ; 

And brawlie weel he kend the way 
To please a bonie lass. 

It's up yon heathery mountain 
And down yon scraggy glen, 

We daurna gang a-milking 
For Charlie and his men ! 



BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 169 

Such in nature and origin are the songs of Burns. 
Of some three hundred written or rewritten by 
him, a large number are negligible in estimating his 
poetical capacity. One cause lay in his unfortu- 
nate ambition to write in the style of his eight- 
eenth-century predecessors in English, with the 
accompanying mythological allusions, personifica- 
tions, and scraps of artificial diction. Another 
was his pathetic eagerness to supply Thomson 
with material in his undertaking to preserve the 
old melodies — an eagerness which often led him to 
send in verses of which he himself felt that their 
only defense w^as that they were better than none. 
Thus his collected works are burdened with a 
considerable mass of very indifferent stuff. But 
when this has all been removed, w^e have left a 
body of song such as probably no writer in any 
language has bequeathed to his country. It is 
marked, first of all, by its peculiar harmony of 
expression with the utterance of the common peo- 
ple. Direct and simple, its diction was still capa- 
ble of carrying intense feeling, a humor incom- 
parable in its archness and sly mirth, and a power 
of idealizing ordinary experience without effort 
or affectation. The union of these words with 
the traditional melodies, on which we have so 



170 BURNS 

strongly insisted, gave them a superb singing qual- 
ity, which has had as much to do with their popu- 
larity as their thought or their feeling. This 
union, however, has its drawbacks when we come 
to consider the songs as literature ; for to present 
them as here in bare print without the living tune 
is to perpetuate a divorce which their author 
never contemplated. No editor of Burns can fail 
to feel a pang when he thinks that these words 
may be heard by ears that carry no echo of the 
airs to which they were born. Here lies the 
fundamental reason for what seems to outsiders 
the exaggerated estimate of Burns in the judg- 
ment of his countrymen. What they extol is 
not mere literature, but song, the combination 
of poetry and music; and it is only when Burns 
is judged as an artist in this double sense that he 
is judged fairly. 



CHAPTER IV 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 



FAME first came to Burns through his sat- 
ires. Before he had been recognized by the 
Edinburgh Htterateurs, before he had written 
more than a handful of songs, he was known and 
feared on his own countryside as a formidable 
critic of ecclesiastical tyranny. It was this repu- 
tation that made possible the success of the sub- 
scription to the Kilmarnock volume, and so saved 
Burns to Scotland. 

* Two characteristics of the Kirk of Scotland 
had tended to prepare the people to welcome an 
attack on its authority: the severity with which 
the clergy administered discipline, and the ex- 
tremes to which they had pushed their Calvinism. 
In spite of the existence of dissenting bodies, 
the great mass of the population belonged to the 
established church, and both their spiritual privi- 
leges and their social standing were at the mercy 
of the Kirk session and the presiding minister. 
171 



172 BURNS 

It is difficult for a Protestant community to-day 
to realize the extent to which the conduct of the 
individual and the family were controlled by the 
ecclesiastical authorities. Offenses which now 
would at most be the subject of private remon- 
strance were treated as public crimes and expiated 
in church before the whole parish. Gavin Hamil- 
ton, Burns's friend and landlord at Mossgiel, a 
liberal gentleman of means and standing, was 
prosecuted in the church courts for lax attend- 
ance at divine service, for traveling on Sabbath, 
for neglecting family worship, and for having 
had one of his servants dig new potatoes on the 
Lord's day. Burns's irregular relations with 
Jean Armour led to successive appearances by 
both him and Jean before the congregation, to 
receive open rebuke and to profess repentance. 
Further expiation was demanded in the form of 
a contribution for the poor. 

Against the discipline which he himself had to 
suffer Burns seems to have made no protest, and 
probably thought it just enough ; but what he con- 
sidered the persecution of his friend roused his 
indignation. This was all the fiercer as he re- 
garded some of the members of the session as 
hypocrites, whose own private morals would not 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 173 

stand examination. Chief among these was a 
certain WilHam Fisher, immortaHzed in a satire 
the appHcation of which was meant to extend to 
the whole class which he represented. 

HOLY WILLIE'S PRAYER 

Thou, that in the Heavens does dwell, 
Wha, as it pleases best Thysel', 

Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell, 

A' for thy glory, 
And no for ony guid or ill 

They've done before thee! 

1 bless and praise thy matchless might, 
Whan thousands thou hast left in night. 
That I am here before thy sight, 

For gifts an' grace 
A burning and a shining light. 
To a' this place. 

What viras I, or my generation, 

That I should get sic exaltation? such 

I, vi^ha deserv'd most just damnation. 

For broken laws, 
Sax thousand years ere my creation. Six 

Thro' Adam's cause. 

When from my mither's womb I fell, 

Thou might have plung'd me deep in hell. 

To gnash my gooms, and weep and wail, gums 

In burning lakes. 
Where damned devils roar and yell, 

Chain'd to their stakes; 



troubled 



must 



drunk 



meddle with 



too 



174 BURNS 

Yet I am here a chosen sample, 

To show Thy grace is great and ample; 

I'm here a pillar o' Thy temple, 

Strong as a rock, 
A guide, a buckler, an example 

To a' Thy flock. 

But yet, O Lord ! confess I must 
At times I'm f ash'd wi' fleshly lust ; 
An' sometimes too, in warldly trust. 

Vile self gets in; 
But Thou remembers we are dust, 

Defil'd wi' sin. 

O Lord! yestreen, Thou kens, wi' Meg — 
Thy pardon I sincerely beg — 
O ! may 't ne'er be a living plague 

To my dishonour. 
An' I'll ne'er Hft a lawless leg 

Again upon her. 

Besides I farther maun avow — 

Wi' Leezie's lass, three times, I trow — 

But, Lord, that Friday I was fou, 

When I cam near her, 
Or else, Thou kens, thy servant true 

Wad never steer her. 

May be Thou lets this fleshly thorn 

Beset Thy servant e'en and morn 

Lest he owre high and proud should turn, 

That he's sae gifted; 
If sae, Thy hand maun e'en be borne, 

Until thou lift it. 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 175 



Lord, bless Thy chosen in this place, 
For here thou hast a chosen race; 
But God confound their stubborn face, 

And blast their name, 
Wha' bring Thy elders to disgrace 

An' public shame. 

Lord, mind Gau'n Hamilton's deserts, 
He drinks, an' swears, an' plays at cartes. 
Yet has sae mony takin' arts 

Wi' great an' sma', 
Frae God's ain priest the people's hearts 

He steals awa'. 

An' when we chasten'd him therefor. 
Thou kens how he bred sic a splore 
As set the warld in a roar 

O' laughin' at us; 
Curse thou his basket and his store. 

Kail and potatoes! 

Lord hear my earnest cry an' pray'r. 

Against that presbyt'ry o' Ayr; 

Thy strong right hand. Lord, make it bare 

Upo' their heads ; 
Lord, visit them, and dinna spare, 

For their misdeeds. 

O Lord my God, that glib-tongu'd Aiken, 

My very heart and soul are quakin', 

To think how we stood sweatin', shakin'. 

An' pish'd wi' dread, 
While he, wi' hingin' lips and snakin', 

Held up his head. 



cards 



raised such a row 



do not 



sneering 



176 BURNS 

Lord, in Thy day of vengeance try him ; 
Lord, visit him wha did employ him, 
And pass not in Thy mercy by them. 

Nor hear their pray'r : 
But, for Thy people's sake, destroy them. 

And dinna spare. 



But, Lord, remember me and mine 
Wi' mercies temporal and divine, 
That I for grace and gear may shine 

ExceU'd by nane. 
And a' the glory shall be thine, 

Amen, Amen! | 

Still more highly generalized is his Address to 
the Unco Giiid, a plea for charity in judgment, 
kept from sentimentalism by its gleam of humor. 
It has perhaps the widest appeal of any of his 
poems of this class. One may note that as Burns 
passes from the satirical and humorous tone to 
the directly didactic, the dialect disappears, and 
the last two stanzas are practically pure English. 



ADDRESS TO THE UNCO GUID, OR THE 
RIGIDLY RIGHTEOUS 

My son, these maxims make a rule. 
And lump them aye thegither: 

The rigid righteous is a fool. 
The rigid wise anither; 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 



177 



The cleanest corn that e'er was dight, sifted 

May hae some pylcs o' caff in; grains, chaflE 

So ne'er a fellow-creature slight 
For random fits o' daffin. larking 

Solomon (Eccles. vii. 16). 



O ye wha are sae guid yoursel, 

Sae pious and sae holy, 
Ye've nought to do but mark and tell 

Your neibour's f auts and folly ! 
Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill, 

Supplied wi' store o' water : 
The heapet happer's ebbing still, 

An' still the clap plays clatter! 



so good 



faults 
well-going 

hopper 
clapper 



Hear me, ye venerable core, 

As counsel for poor mortals 
That frequent pass douce Wisdom's door, 

For glaikit Folly's portals ; 
I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes, 

Would here propone defences, — 
Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes, 

Their failings and mischances. 



company 

sedate 
giddy 

put forth 
restive 



Ye see your state wi' theirs compar'd, 

And shudder at the niffer ; 
But cast a moment's fair regard — 

What makes the mighty differ ? 
Discount what scant occasion gave, 

That purity ye pride in. 
And (what's aft mair than a' the lave) 

Your better art o* hidin*. 



exchange 
difference 

rest 



178 



BURNS 



Think, when your castigated pulse 

Gies now and then a wallop, 
What ragings must his veins convulse, 

That still eternal gallop! 
Wi' wind and tide fair i' your tail, 

Right on ye scud your sea-way; ' 
But in the teeth o' baith to sail, 

It makes an unco leeway. 

See Social life and Glee sit down, 

All joyous and unthinking, 
Till, quite transmugrified, they're grown 

Debauchery and Drinking: 
O would they stay to calculate 

Th' eternal consequences ; 
Or — your-more dreaded hell to state — 

Damnation of expenses! 

Ye high, exalted virtuous Dames, 

Tied up in godly laces, 
Before ye gie poor Frailty names. 

Suppose a change o' cases ; 
A dear lov'd lad, convenience snug, 

A treacherous inclination — 
But, let me whisper i' your lug, 

Ye're aiblins nae temptation. 



Then gently scan your brother man. 
Still gentler sister woman ; 

Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang, 
To step aside is human. 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 179 

One point must still be greatly dark, 

The moving why they do it ; 
And just as lamely can ye mark 

How far perhaps they rue it. 

Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 

Decidedly can try us ; 
He knows each chord, its various tone, 

Each spring, its various bias. 
Then at the balance let's be mute, 

We never can adjust it; 
What's done we partly may compute,"] 

But know not what's resisted. J) 

As regards the questions of doctrine there 
were in the church two main parties, known as 
the Auld Lichts and the New Lichts. The former 
were high Calvinists, emphasizing the doctrines 
of election, predestination, original sin, and eter- 
nal punishment. The latter comprised many of 
the younger clergy who had been touched by the 
rationalistic tendencies of the century, and who 
were blamed for various heresies — notably Ar- 
minianism and Socinianism. Whatever their 
precise beliefs, they laid less stress than their op- 
ponents on dogma and more on benevolent con- 
duct, and Burns had strong sympathy with their 
Hberalism. He first appeared in their support in 
an Epistle to John Goldie, a Kilmarnock wine- 



180 



BURNS 



merchant who had published Essays on Various 
Important Subjects, Moral and Divine. Though 
he does not expHcitly accept the author's Armin- 
ianism, he makes it clear that he relished his at- 
tacks on orthodoxy. A quarrel between two 
prominent Auld Licht ministers gave him his 
next opportunity, and the circulation in manu- 
script of The Twa Herds: or, The Holy Tulyie 
made him a personage in the district. With an 
irony more vigorous than delicate he affects to 
lament that 



pastors, 


west 


The twa best herds in a' the wast 


gave 




That e'er ga'e gospel horn a blast 
These five an' twenty simmers past — 


sorrow 




Oh, dool to tell! 


quarrel 




Hae had a bitter black out-cast 


Between 




Atween themsel, 



and he ends with the hope that if patronage 
could be abolished and the lairds forced to give 

the brutes the power themsels 
To chuse their herds, 



gallows 
sorely 



Then Orthodoxy yet may prance, 
An' Learning in a woody dance, 
An' that fell cur ca'd 'common-sense,' 

That bites sae sair, 
Be banish'd o'er the sea to France: 

Let him bark there. 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 



181 



More light is thrown on Burns's positive atti- 
tude in reHgious matters by his Epistle to Mc- 
Math, a young New Licht minister in Tarbolton. 
From the evidences of the letters, we are justi- 
fied in accepting at its face value the profession 
of reverence for true religion made by Burns in 
this epistle; his hatred of the sham needs no 
corroboration. 



TO THE REV. JOHN M'MATH 

Enclosing a Copy of Holy Willie's Prayer, which he had 
requested, September 17, 1785 



While at the stook the shearers cow'r 
To shun the bitter blaudin' show'r, 
Or, in gulravage rinnin', scour ; 

To pass the time, 
To you I dedicate the hour 

In idle rhyme. 



shock, reapers 

driving 

horseplay running 



My Musie, tir'd wi' mony a sonnet 

On gown, an' ban', an' douce black-bonnet, 

Is grown right eerie now she's done it. 

Lest they should blame her, 
An' rouse their holy thunder on it, 

And anathem her. 



sedate 
scared 



182 



BURNS 



Loose 



elastic 



Worse than 



good as 



On the fashion 



railers 



daunt, blusterers 



give 



I own 'twas rash, an' rather hardy, 
That I, a simple country bardie, 
Shou'd meddle wi' a pack sae sturdy, 

Wha, if they ken me, 
Can easy, wi' a single wordie, 

Lowse hell upon me. 

But I gae mad at their grimaces, 
Their sighin*, cantin', grace-proud faces. 
Their three-mile prayers, and half-mile graces, 

Their raxin' conscience, 
Whase greed, revenge, an' pride disgraces 

Waur nor their nonsense. 

There's Gau'n, misca't waur than a beast, 
Wha has mair honour in his breast 
Than mony scores as guid's the priest 

Wha sae abus'd him : 
An* may a bard no crack his jest 

What way they've used him? 

See him the poor man's friend in need. 
The gentleman in word an' deed. 
An' shall his fame an' honour bleed 

By worthless skellums, 
An* not a Muse erect her head 

To cowe the blellums? 

O Pope, had I thy satire's darts 
To gie the rascals their deserts, 
I'd rip their rotten, hollow hearts, 

An' tell aloud 
Their jugglin', hocus-pocus arts 

To cheat the crowd. 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 183 

God knows I'm no the thing I should be, 
Nor am I even the thing I could be, 
But, twenty times, I rather would be 

An atheist clean, 
Than under gospel colours hid be, 

Just for a screen. 

An honest man may like a glass, 

An honest man may like a lass ; 

But mean revenge, an' malice fause, false 

He'll still disdain. 
An' then cry zeal for gospel laws, 

Like some we ken. 

They tak religion in their mouth ; 

They talk o' mercy, grace, an' truth, 

For what? To gie their malice skouth scope 

On some puir wight. 
An' hunt him down, o'er right an' ruth, against 

To ruin straight. 

All hail, Religion, maid divine ! 
Pardon a muse sae mean as mine, 
Who in her rough imperfect line 

Thus daurs to name thee; 
To stigmatize false friends of thine 

Can ne'er defame thee. 

Tho' blotcht an' foul wi' mony a stain, 

An' far unworthy of thy train, 

Wi' trembling voice I tune my strain 

To join wi' those 
Who boldly daur thy cause maintain 

In spite o' foes: 



^ 



184 BURNS 

In spite o' crowds, in spite o* mobs, 
In spite of undermining jobs, 
In spite o' dark banditti stabs 

At worth an' merit, 
By scoundrels, even wi' holy robes. 

But hellish spirit. 

O Ayr, my dear, my native ground I 
Within thy presbyterial bound, 
A candid lib'ral band is found 

Of public teachers, 
As men, as Christians too, renown'd. 

An' manly preachers. 

Sir, in that circle you are nam'd, 
Sir, in that circle you are f am'd ; 
An' some, by whom your doctrine's blam'd, 

(Which gies you honour) — 
Even, sir, by them your heart's esteem'd, 

An' winning manner. 

Pardon this freedom I have ta'en. 
An' if impertinent I've been, 
Impute it not, good sir, in ane 

Whase heart ne'er wrang'd ye, 
But to his utmost would befriend 

Ought that belang'd ye. 

A further fling at orthodoxy appeared in The 
Ordination, a piece written to comfort the Kil- 
marnock liberals when an Auld Licht minister 
was selected for the second charge there. The 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 185 

tone is again one of ironical congratulation, and 
Burns describes the rejoicings of the elect with 
infinite zest. Two stanzas on the church music 
will illustrate his method. 



Mak haste an' turn King David owre, 

An' lilt wi' holy clangor; 
O' double verse come gie us four 

An' skirl up the Bangor: 
This day the Kirk kicks up a stoure, 

Nae mair the knaves shall vi^rang her, 
For Heresy is in her pow'r, 

And gloriously she'll whang her 
Wi' pith this day. 



open the Psalms 

sing 

give 

shriek, a Psalm- 
tune 
dust 

No more 
thrash 



Nae mair by Babel streams we'll weep, 

To think upon our Zion ; 
And hing our fiddles up to sleep, 

Like baby-clouts a-dryin'; 
Come, screw the pegs wi' tunefu' cheep, 

And o'er the thairms be tryin'; 
O, rare ! to see our elbucks wheep. 

And a' like lamb-tails flyin* 

Fu' fast this day ! 



hang 

chirp 

strings 
elbows jerk 



In the same ironical fashion he digresses in 
his Dedication to Gavin Hamilton to satirize the 
"high-fliers' " contempt for "cold morality" and 
for their faith in the power of orthodox belief to 
cover lapses in conduct. 



1§6 BURNS 

Morality, thou deadly bane, 
Thy tens o' thousands thou hast slain 1 
Vain is his hope, whose stay and trust is 
In moral mercy, truth and justice! 



small coin 



window from 



No — Stretch a point to catch a plack; 
Abuse a brother to his back; 
Steal thro' the winnock frae a whore, 
But point the rake that takes the door: 



any whinstone 
hold, grindstone 



Be to the poor like ony whunstane, 
And baud their noses to the grunstane; 
Ply ev'ry art o' legal thieving; 
No matter — stick to sound believing. 



palms 



Learn three-mile pray'rs, an' half-mile graces, 
Wi' weel-spread looves, an' lang, wry faces ; 
Grunt up a solemn, lengthen'd groan, 
And damn a' parties but your own ; 
I'll warrant them ye're nae deceiver, 
A steady, sturdy, staunch believer. 



The period within which these satires were 
written was short — 1785 and 1786; but some 
three years later, on the prosecutioij of a liberal 
minister, Doctor McGill of Ayr, for the publica- 
tion of A Practical Essay on the Death of Jesus 
Christ, which was charged with teaching Unitari- 
anism, Burns took up the theme again. The 
Kirk's Alarm is a rattHng "ballad," full of energy 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 187 

and scurrilous wit, but, like many of its kind, it 
has lost much of its interest through the great 
amount of personal detail. A few stanzas will 
show that, even after his absence from local pol- 
itics during his Edinburgh sojourn, he had lost 
none of his gusto in belaboring the Ayrshire Cal- 
vinists. 

Orthodox, Orthodox, wha believe in John Knox, 
Let me sound an alarm to your conscience: 

There's a heretic blast has been blawn i' the wast, 
That what is not sense must be nonsense. 

Dr. Mac, Dr. Mac, you should stretch on a rack. 

To strike evil-doers wi' terror ; 
To join faith and sense upon any pretence, 

Is heretic, damnable error. 



D'rymple mild, D'rymple mild, tho' your heart's like 
a child, 

And your life like the new driven snaw, 
Yet that winna save ye, auld Satan must have ye. 

For preaching that three's ane and twa. 

Calvin's sons, Calvin's sons, seize your sp'ritual guns. 

Ammunition you never can need ; 
Your hearts are the stuff will be powther enough, 

And your skulls are storehouses o' lead. 



188 BURNS 

It was inevitable from the nature and purpose 
of these satirical poems that, however keen an 
interest they might raise in their time and place, 
a large part of that interest should evaporate in 
the course of time. Yet it would be a mistake to 
regard their importance as limited to raising a 
laugh against a few obscure bigots. The evils 
that Burns attacked, however his verses may be 
tinged with personal animus and occasional in- 
justice, were real evils that existed far beyond 
the county of Ayr; and in the movement for en- 
lightenment and liberation from these evils and 
their like that was then sweeping over Scotland, 
the wit and invective of the poet played no small 
part. The development that followed did, indeed, 
take a direction that he was far from foreseeing. 
The moderate party, which he supported, grad- 
ually gained the upper hand in the Kirk, and, 
upholding as it did the system of patronage, be- 
came more and more associated with the aristoc- 
racy who bestowed the livings. The result was 
that the moderate clergy degenerated under pros- 
perity and lost their spiritual zeal; while their 
opponents, chastened by adversity, became the 
champions of the autonomy of the church, and, 
in the *'ten years' conflict" that broke out little 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 189 

more than a generation after the death of Burns, 
showed themselves of the stuff of the martyrs. It 
^vould be impossible to trace the extent of the in- 
fluence of the poet on the purging of orthodoxy 
or on the limitation of ecclesiastical despotism, 
since his work was in accord with the drift of 
the times; but it is fair to infer that, especially 
among the common people who were less likely 
to be reached by more philosophical discussion, 
his share was far from inconsiderable. 

The poetical value of the satires is another mat- 
ter. It may be questioned whether satire is ever 
essentially poetry, as poetry has been understood 
for the last hundred years. The dominant mood 
of satire is too antagonistic to imagination. But 
i-f we restrict our attention to the characteristic 
qualities of verse satire — vividness in depicting 
its object, blazing indignation or bitter scorn in 
its attitude, and wit in its expression, we shall be 
forced to grant that Burns achieved here notable 
success. Of the rarer power of satire to rise 
above the local, temporal, and personal to the ex- 
hibiting of universal elements in human life, there 
are comparatively few instances in Burns. The 
Address to the Unco Guid is perhaps the finest 
example ; and here, as usually in his work, the ap- 



190 BURNS 

proach to the general leads him to drop the 
scourge for the sermon. 

In his tendency to preach, Burns was as much 
the inheritor of a national tradition as in any of 
his other characteristics. A strain of moralizing 
is well marked in the Scottish poets even before 
the Reformation, and, since the time of Burns, 
the preaching Scot has been notably exemplified 
not only in a professed prophet like Carlyle, but 
in so artistic a temperament as Stevenson. Nor 
did consciousness of his failures in practise em- 
barrass Burns in the indulgence of the luxury of 
precept. Side by side with frank confessions of 
weakness we find earnest if not stern exhorta- 
tions to do, not as he did, but as he taught. And 
as Scots have an appetite for hearing as well as 
for making sermons, his didactic pieces are 
among those most quoted and relished by his 
countrymen. The morally elevated but poetically 
inferior closing stanzas of The Cotter's Saturday 
Night are an instance in point; others are the 
morals appended to To a Mouse and To a Daisy, 
and to a number of his rhyming epistles. 

These epistles are among the most significant 
of his writings for the reader in search of per- 
sonal revelations. The Epistle to James Smith 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 191 

contains the much-quoted stanza on the poet's 

motives : 

Some rhyme a neebor's name to lash; 

Some rhyme (vain thought!) for needful cash; 

Some rhyme to court the countra clash, gossip 

An* raise a din; 
For me, an aim I never fash; trouble about 

I rhyme for fun. 

Another gives his view of his equipment: 

The star that rules my luckless lot, 

Has fated me the russet coat. 

An' damned my fortune to the groat; 

But, in requit. 
Has blest me with a random-shot 

O' countra wit. country 

Then he passes from literary considerations to 
his general philosophy of life: 

But why o' death begin a tale? 

Just now we're living sound an* hale; 

Then top and maintop crowd the sail; 

Heave Care o'er-side ! 
And large, before Enjoyment's gale. 

Let's tak the tide. 

When ance life's day draws near the gloamin, 
Then fareweel vacant, careless roamin ; 
An' fareweel cheerfu' tankards foamin, 

An' social noise : 
An' fareweel dear, deluding Woman, 

The joy of joys! 



192 BURNS 

Here, as often, he contrasts his own reckless 
impulsive temper with that of prudent calcula- 
tion: 

With steady aim, some Fortune chase ; 
Keen Hope does ev'ry sinew brace ; 
Thro' fair, thro' foul, they urge the race, 

And seize the prey: 
Then cannie, in some cozie place, 

They close the day. 

And others, like your humble servan', 
Poor wights ! nae rules nor roads observin', 
To right or left eternal swervin', 

They zig-zag on; 
Till, curst with age, obscure an' starvin*, 

They aften groan. 

O ye douce folk that live by rule, 
Grave, tideless-blooded, calm an' cool, 
Compar'd wi' you — O fool ! fool ! fool ! 

How much unlike! 
Your hearts are just a standing pool, 

Your lives a dyke! 

Nothing is more characteristic of the poet than 
this attitude toward prudence — this mixture of 
intellectual respect with emotional contempt. He 
admits freely that restraint and calculation pay, 
but impulse makes life so much more interest- 
ing! 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 193 

The Epistle to Davie, a Brother Poet, deserves 
to be quoted in full. It contains the final phras- 
ing of the central point of Burns's ethics, the 
Scottish rustic's version of that philosophy of 
benevolence with which Shaftesbury sought to 
warm the chill of eighteenth-century thought: 

The heart aye's the part aye 
That makes us right or wrang. 

The mood of this poem is Burns's middle mood, 
lying between the black melancholy of his poems 
of despair and remorse and the exhilaration of 
his more exalted bacchanalian and love songs — 
the mood, we may infer, of his normal working 
life. We may again observe the correspondence 
between the change of dialect and change of tone 
in stanzas nine and ten, the increase of artificial- 
ity coming with his literary English and culmi- 
nating in the unspeakable "tenebrific scene." His 
humor returns with his Scots in the last verse. 

EPISTLE TO DAVIE, A BROTHER POET 

While winds frae aff Ben Lomond blaw, 
And bar the doors wi' driving snaw, 

And hing us owre the ingle, hang, fire 

I set me down to pass the time, 
And spin a verse or twa o' rhyme, 

In hamely westlin jingle. west-country 



194 



BURNS 



While frosty winds blaw in the drift, 

Ben to the chimla lug, 
I grudge a wee the great-folk's gift, 
That live sae bien an' snug; 
I tent less, and want less 
Their roomy fire-side; 
But 'hanker and canker 
To see their cursed pride. 

It's hardly in a body's pow'r, 
To keep, at times, frae being sour, 
To see how things are shar'd; 
How best o' chiels are whyles in want, 
While coofs on countless thousands rant, 

And ken na how to wair't : 
But, Davie, lad, ne'er fash your head, 

Tho' we hae little gear, 
We're fit to win our daily bread, 
As lang's we're hale and fier: 
*Mair spier na, nor fear na,* 

Auld age ne'er mind a feg; 
The last o't, the warst o't, 
Is only but to beg. 



To lie in kilns and barns at e'en. 
When banes are craz'd, and bluid is thin, 

Is, doubtless, great distress ! 
Yet then content could mak us blest; 
Ev'n then, sometimes, we'd snatch a taste 

Of truest happiness. 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 



195 



The honest heart that's free frae a' 

Intended fraud or guile, 
However Fortune kick the ba', 
Has aye some cause to smile: 
And mind still, you'll find still, 

A comfort this nae sma'; 
Nae mair then, we'll care then, 
Nae farther can we fa*. 



baU 



not small 



What tho' like commoners of air, 
We wander out, we know not where, 

But either house or hal'? 
Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods. 
The sweeping vales, and foaming floods, 

Are free alike to all. 
In days when daisies deck the ground. 

And blackbirds whistle clear, 
With honest joy our hearts will bound, 
To see the coming year : 

On braes when we please, then, 

We'll sit and sowth a tune; 
Syne rhyme till't, we'll time till't. 
And sing't when we hae done. 



Without 



hill-sides 

hum 

Then 



It's no in titles nor in rank; 

It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, 

To purchase peace and rest; 
It's no in making muckle, mair : 
It's no in books, it's no in lear. 

To make us truly blest: 



much, more 
learning 



196 BURNS 

If happiness hae not her seat 

And centre in the breast, 
We may be wise, or rich, or great, 
But never can be blest: 
Nae treasures, nor pleasures. 
Could make us happy lang; 
The heart aye's the part aye 
That makes us right or wrang. 



Think ye, that sic as you and I, 

Wha drudge and drive thro' wet an' dry, 

Wi' never-ceasing toil; 
Think ye, are we less blest than they, 
Wha scarcely tent us in their way. 

As hardly worth their while? 
Alas! how oft in haughty mood, 

God's creatures they oppress ! 
Or else, neglecting a* that's guid. 
They riot in excess! 

Baith careless, and fearless. 

Of either heav'n or hell! 
Esteeming, and deeming 
It's a' an idle tale! 



N 



Then let us cheerfu' acquiesce; 
Nor make our scanty pleasures less. 

By pining at our state ; 
And, even should misfortunes come, 
I, here wha sit, hae met wi' some, 

An*s thankfu* for them yet. 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 197, 

They gie the wit of age to youth ; 

They let us ken oursel; 
They mak us see the naked truth. 
The real guid and ill. 
Tho' losses, and crosses, 

Be lessons right severe. 
There's wit there, ye'Il get there, 
Ye'll find nae other where. 



But tent me, Davie, ace o' hearts ! note 

(To say aught less wad wrang the cartes, cards 

And flatt'ry I detest) 
This life has joys for you and I; 
And joys that riches ne'er could buy; 

And joys the very best. 
There's a' the pleasures o' the heart, 

The lover an' the frien'; 
Ye hae your Meg, your dearest part, 
And I my darling Jean ! 
It warms me, it charms me, 
To mention but her name: 
It heats me, it beets me, kindles 

And sets me a' on flame ! 

O all ye pow'rs who rule above! 
O Thou, whose very self art love! 

Thou know'st my words sincere! 
The life-blood streaming thro' my heart, 
Or my more dear immortal part, 

Is not more fondly dear! 



198 BURNS 

When heart-corroding care and grief 

Deprive my soul of rest, 
Her dear idea brings relief 
And solace to my breast. 
Thou Being, All-seeing, 

O hear my fervent pray'r; 
Still take her, and make her 
Thy most peculiar care ! 

All hail, ye tender feelings dear! 
The smile of love, the friendly tear, 

The sympathetic glow ! 
Long since this world's thorny ways 
Had number'd out my weary days. 

Had it not been for you ! 
Fate still has blest me with a friend. 

In every care and ill; 
And oft a more endearing band, 
A tie more tender still. 
It Hghtens, it brightens 
The tenebrific scene. 
To meet with, and greet with 
My Davie or my Jean. 

O, how that name inspires my style ! 
The words come skelpin', rank and file, 

Amaist before I ken ! 
The ready measure rins as fine 
As Phoebus and the famous Nine 

Were glowrin* owre my pen. 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 199 



My spavied Pegasus will limp, 


spavined 


Till ance he's fairly het; 


once, hot 


And then he'll hilch, and stilt, and jump, 


hobble, limp, 

jump 
surprising spurt 


An' rin an unco fit : 


But lest then the beast then 




Should rue this hasty ride. 




I'll light now, and dight now 


wipe 


His sweaty, wizen'd hide. 





The didactic tendency reaches its height in the 
Epistle to a Young Friend. Here there is no 
personal confession, but a conscious and pro- 
fessed sermon, unrelated, as the last line shows, 
to the practise of the preacher. It is, of course, 
only poetry in the eighteenth-century sense — 

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed — 

and as such it should be judged. The critics who 
have reacted most violently against the attempted 
canonization of Burns have been inclined to sneer 
at this admirable homily, and to insinuate insin- 
cerity. But human nature affords every-day ex- 
amples of just such perfectly sincere inconsist- 
ency as we find between the sixth stanza and 
Burns's own conduct ; while not inconsistency but 
a very genuine rhetoric inspires the characteristic 
quatrain which closes the seventh. 



200 



BURNS 



EPISTLE TO A YOUNG FRIEND 

I lang hae thought, my youthfu' friend, 

A something to have sent you, 
Tho' it should serve nae ither end 

Than just a kind memento; 
But how the subject-theme may gang, 

Let time and chance determine; 
Perhaps it may turn out a sang, 

Perhaps turn out a sermon. 

Ye'll try the world soon, my lad. 

And, Andrew dear, believe me, 
Ye'll find mankind an unco squad, 

And muckle they may grieve ye : 
For care and trouble set your thought, 

Ev'n when your end's attained ; 
And a' your views may come to nought, 

Where ev'ry nerve is strained. 

I'll no say men are villains a'; 

The real harden'd wicked, 
Wha hae nae check but human law. 

Are to a few restricked ; 
But och ! mankind are unco weak, 

An' little to be trusted; 
If Self the wavering balance shake, 

It's rarely right adjusted! 



Yet they wha fa' in Fortune's strife. 
Their fate we shouldna censure; 

For still th' important end of life 
They equally may answer. 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 



201 



A man may hae an honest heart, 
Tho' poortith hourly stare him ; 

A man may tak a neibor's part, 
Yet hae nae cash to spare him. 



poverty 



Aye free, aff han', your story tell. 

When wi' a bosom crony; 
But still keep something to yoursel 

Ye scarcely tell to ony. 
Conceal yoursel as weel's ye can 

Frae critical dissection; 
But keek thro' ev'ry other man 

Wi' sharpen'd sly inspection. 



pry 



The sacred lowe o' weel-plac'd love, 

Luxuriantly indulge it; 
But never tempt th' illicit rove, 

Tho' naething should divulge it: 
I waive the quantum o' the sin, 

The hazard of concealing ; 
But och! it hardens a' within. 

And petrifies the feeling! 



flame 



attempt, roving 



To catch Dame Fortune's golden smile, 

Assiduous wait upon her ; 
And gather gear by ev'ry wile 

That's justified by honour; 
Not for to hide it in a hedge, 

Nor for a train-attendant ; 
But for the glorious privilege 

Of being independent. 



202 BURNS 

The fear o' hell's a hangman's whip 

To haud the wretch in order; 
But where ye feel your honour grip, 

Let that aye be your border : 
Its slightest touches, instant pause — 

Debar a' side pretences; 
And resolutely keep its laws, 

Uncaring consequences. 

The great Creator to revere 

Must sure become the creature; 
But still the preaching cant forbear, 

And ev'n the rigid feature : 
Yet ne'er with wits profane to range 

Be complaisance extended ; 
An atheist-laugh's a poor exchange 

For Deity offended. 

When ranting round in Pleasure's ring, 

Religion may be blinded; 
Or, if she gie a random sting, 

It may be little minded ; 
But when on life we're tempest-driv'n — 

A conscience but a canker — 
A correspondence fix'd wi' Heav'n 

Is sure a noble anchor. 

Adieu, dear amiable youth ! 

Your heart can ne'er be wanting ! 
May prudence, fortitude, and truth 

Erect your brow undaunting. 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 203 

In ploughman phrase, God send you speed 

Still daily to grow wiser ; 
And may ye better reck the rede heed the advice 

Than ever did th' adviser! 

The general level of the rhyming letters of 
Burns is astonishingly high. They bear, as such 
compositions should, the impression of free spon- 
taneity, and indeed often read like sheer im- 
provisations. Yet they are sprinkled with ad- 
mirable stanzas of natural description, shrewd 
criticism, delightful humor, and are pervaded by 
a delicate tactfulness possible only to a man with 
a genius for friendship. They are usually writ- 
ten in the favorite six-line stanza, the meter that 
flowed most easily from his pen, and in language 
are the richest vernacular. His ambition to be 
"literary" seldom brings in its jarring notes here, 
and indeed at times he seems to avenge himself 
on this besetting sin by a very individual jocose- 
ness toward the mythological figures that intrude 
into his more serious efforts. His Muse is the 
special victim. Instead of the conventional draped 
figure she becomes a "tapetless, ramfeezl'd hiz- 
zie," "saft at best an' something lazy;" she is a 
"thowless jad;" or she is dethroned altogether: 



204 



BURNS 



"We'll cry nae jads frae heathen hills 
To help or roose us, 

But browster wives an' whisky stills — 
They are the Muses !" 

Again the tone is one of affectionate familiar- 
ity: 

Leeze me on rhyme ! It's aye a treasure, 
My chief, amaist my only pleasure ; 
At hame, a-fiel', at wark or leisure, 

The Muse, poor hizzie, 
Tho' rough an' raploch be her measure, 
She's seldom lazy. 

Haud to the Muse, my dainty Davie: 
The warl' may play you monie a shavie. 
But for the Muse, she'll never leave ye, 

Tho' e'er sae puir ; 
Na, even tho' limpin wi' the spavie 

Frae door to door ! 

Once more, half scolding, half flattering: 



Ye glaikit, gleesome, dainty damies, 
Wha by Castalia's wimplin streamies 
Lowp, sing, and lave your pretty limbics, 

Ye ken, ye ken, 
That Strang necessity supreme is 

'Mang sons o' men. 

The epigrams, epitaphs, elegies, and other oc- 
casional verses thrown off by Burns and dili- 



SATIRES AND EPISTLES 205 

gently collected by his editors need little discus- 
sion. They not infrequently exhibit the less 
generous sides of his character, and but seldom 
demand rereading on account of their neatness or 
felicity or energy. One may be given as an ex- 
ample : 

ON JOHN DOVE, INNKEEPER 

Here lies Johnie Pigeon : 
What was his religion 

Whae'er desires to ken 
In some other warl' world 

Maun follow the carl Must, old fellow 

For here Johnie Pigeon had none! 

Strong ale was ablution; 
Small beer, persecution; 

A dram was memento mori; 
But a full flowing bowl 
Was the saving his soul, 

And port was celestial glory! 



CHAPTER V 

DESCRIPTIVE AND NARRATIVE POETRY 

THE "world of Scotch drink, Scotch man- 
ners, and Scotch reHgion" was not, 
Matthew Arnold insisted, a beautiful world, and 
it was, he held, a disadvantage to Burns that he 
had not a beautiful world to deal with. This 
famous dictum is a standing challenge to any 
critic who regards Burns as a creator of beauty. 
It is true that when Burns took this world at its 
apparent worst, when Scotch drink meant bestial 
drunkenness, when Scotch manners meant shame- 
less indecency, when Scotch religion meant blas- 
phemous defiance, he created The Jolly Beggars, 
which the same critic found a "splendid and 
puissant production." We must conclude, then, 
that sufficient genius can sublimate even a hide- 
ously sordid world into a superb work of art, 
which is presumably beautiful. 

But the verdict passed on the Scottish world 
206 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 207 

of Bums is not to be taken without scrutiny. A 
review of those poems of Burns that are pri- 
marily descriptive will recall to us the chief fea- 
tures of that world. 

Let us begin with The Cotter's Saturday 
Night, Burns's tribute to his father's house. Let 
us discard the introductory stanza of dedication, 
as not organically a part of the poem. The scene 
is set in a gray November landscape. The tired 
laborer is shown returning to his cottage, no 
touch of idealization being added to the picture 
of physical weariness save what comes from the 
feeling for home and wife and children. Then 
follow the gathering of the older sons and 
daughter, the telling of the experiences of the 
week, and the advice of the father. The daugh- 
ter's suitor arrives, and the girl's consciousness 
as well as the lover's shyness are delicately ren- 
dered. Two stanzas in English moralize the sit- 
uation, and for our present purpose may be ig- 
nored. The supper of porridge and milk and a 
bit of cheese is followed by a reverent account 
of family prayers, the father leading, the family 
joining in the singing of the psalm. And as 
they part for the night, the poet is carried away 



208 BURNS 

into an elevated apostrophe to the country whose 
foundations rest upon such a peasantry, and 
doses with a patriotic prayer for its preservation. 

The truth of the picture is indubitable. The 
poet could, of course, have chosen another phase 
of the same life. The cotter could have come 
home rheumatic and found the children squalling 
and the wife cross. The daughter might have 
been seduced, and the sons absent in the ale- 
house. But what he does describe is just as typ- 
ical, and it is beautiful, though the manners and 
religion are Scottish. 

Another social occasion is the subject of Hal- 
loween. The poem, with Burns's notes, is a 
mine of folk-lore, but we are concerned with it 
as literature. Here the tone is humorous instead 
of reverent, the characters are mixed, the selec- 
tion is more widely representative. With com- 
plete frankness, the poet exhibits human nature 
under the influence of the mating instinct, di- 
rected by harmless, age-old superstitions. The 
superstitions are not attacked, but gently ridi- 
culed. The fundamental veracity of the whole 
is seen when we realize that, in spite of the strong 
local color, it is psychologically true for similar 
festivities among the peasantry of all countries. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 209 



HALLOWEENi 



Upon that night, when fairies light 

On CassiHs Downans- dance, 
Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze, 

On sprightly coursers prance ; 
Or for Colean the rout is ta'en, 

Beneath the moon's pale beams ; 
There, up the Cove,^ to stray an' rove 

Amang the rocks and streams 

To sport that night; 



over, pastures 
road 



Amang the bonnie winding banks 

Where Doon rins wimplin' clear, 
Where Bruce* ance ruled the martial ranks 

An' shook his Carrick spear, 
Some merry friendly country-folks 

Together did convene 
To burn their nits, an' pou their stocks, 

An' haud their Halloween 

Fu' blythe that night: 



winding 
once 



nuts, pull, stalks 
keep 



The lasses feat, an cleanly neat, 

Mair braw than when they're fine; 
Their faces blythe fu' sweetly kythe 

Hearts leal, an' warm, an' kin' : 
The lads sae trig, wi' wooer-babs 

Weel knotted on their garten, 
Some unco blate, an* some wi' gabs 

Gar lasses' hearts gang startin' 

Whyles fast at night. 



trim 

more handsome 

show 

loyal, kind 

love-knots 

garter 

very shy, chatter 

Make 

Sometimes 



210 



BURNS 



must, once 

shut, eyes, grope, 

choose 
big ones, straight 

foolish, lost the 

way- 
cabbage 

pulled, choice 

stalk 

bent 



earth 

pell-mell 

run 

over, shoulder 

if, pith 

pocket-knives 

Then, above 

cautious 

stole 
dodges 

squealed 

almost 

cuddling 

well-hoarded nuts 



Then, first and foremost, thro' the kail, 

Their stocks^ maun a' be sought ance: 
They steek their een, an* grape an' wale 

For muckle anes an' straught anes. 
Poor hav'rel Will fell afif the drift, 

An' wander'd thro' the bow-kail, 
An' pou'd, for want o' better shift, 

A runt was like a sow-tail, 

Sae bow'd, that night. 

Then, straught or crooked, yird or nane, 

They roar an' cry a' throu'ther; 
The ver}^ wee things toddlin' rin — 

Wi' ctocks out-owre their shouther; 
An' gif the custock's sweet or sour, 

Wi' joctelegs they taste them; 
Syne coziely, aboon the door, 

Wi' cannie care they've plac'd them 
To lie that night. 

The lasses staw frae 'mang them a* 

To pou their stalks o' corn;^ 
But Rab slips out, an' jinks about, 

Behint the muckle thorn : 
He grippit Nelly hard an' fast; 

Loud skirled a' the lasses; 
But her tap-pickle maist was lost. 

When kiutlin' i' the fause-house^ 
Wi' him that night. 

The auld guldwife's well-hoordit nits* 
Are round an' round divided, 

An' mony lads' an' lasses' fates 
Are there that night decided: 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 21 1 



Some kindle, couthie, side by side, 

An' burn thegither trimly; 
Some start awa, wi' saucy pride, 

An' jump out-owre the chimlie 

Fu' high that night. 

Jean slips in twa, wi' tentie e'e; 

Wha 'twas, she wadna tell; 
But this is Jock, an' this is me. 

She says in to hersel : 
He bleez'd owre her, an' she owre him, 

As they wad never mair part; 
Till fuff ! he started up the lum, 

An' Jean had e'en a sair heart 

To see't that night. 

Poor Willie, wi' his bow-kail runt, 

Was brunt wi' primsie Mallie, 
An' Mary, nae doubt, took the drunt, 

To be compar'd to Willie: 
Mall's nit lap out, wi' pridefu' fling, 

An' her ain fit it brunt it; 
While Willie lap, an' swoor by jing, 

'Twas just the way he wanted 
To be that night 

Nell had the fause-house in her min', 

She pits hersel an' Rob in ; 
In loving bleeze they sweetly join, 

Till white in ase they're sobbin : 
Nell's heart was dancin' at the view: 

She whisper'd Rob to leuk for't: 
Rob, stownlins, prie'd her bonnie mou*, 

Fu* cozie in the neuk for't. 

Unseen that night 



comfortably 



out of the chim- 
ney 



watchful 

whispers 
blazed 

chimney 



cabbage stump 
precise Molly 
huff 

leapt, start 

foot 

by Jove 



mind 



ashes 



by stealth, tasted, 

mouth 
corner 



212 



BURNS 



Marian 



leaves, gabbing, 
chat 



nearest way 



in the dark 
groped, beams 



frightened 

wound, sweated 
know, trifling 
kiln-pot 



beam-end 



ask 



puffed. 


smoke 


cinder 


burnt 


worsted 


young 


hussy's 


dare 




Devil 




tell 





But Merran sat behint their backs, 

Her thoughts on Andrew Bell ; 
She lea'es them gashin' at their cracks, 

An' slips out by hersel: 
She thro' the yard the nearest taks. 

An' to the kiln she goes then, 
An' darklins grapit for the banks, 

And in the blue-clue^ throws then, 

Right fear'd that night. 

An* aye she win't, an' aye she swat, 

I wat she made nae jaukin'; 
Till something held within the pat, 

Guid Lord ! but she was quaukin' 1 
But whether 'twas the Deil hinisel, 

Or whether 'twas a bauk-en', 
Or whether it was Andrew Bell, 

She did na wait on talkin 

To spier that night. 

Wee Jenn}'^ to her grannie says, 

'Will ye go wi' me, grannie? 
I'll eat the apple^*^ at the glass, 

I gat frae uncle Johnie:' 
She fuff't her pipe wi' sic a lunt, 

In wrath she was sae vap'rin, 
She noticed na an aizle brunt 

Her braw new worset apron 

Out-thro' that night. 

*Ye little skelpie-limmer's face! 

I daur you try sic sportin', 
As seek the foul Thief ony place, 

For him to spae your fortune! 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 213 



Nae doubt but ye may get a sight! 

Great cause ye hae to fear it; 
For mony a ane has gotten a fright, 

An' lived an' died deleerit, 

On sic a night. 

*Ae hairst afore the Sherra-moor, — 

I mind't as weel's yestreen, 
I was a gilpey then, I'm sure 

I was na past fyfteen : 
The simmer had been cauld an' wat, 

An' stuff was unco green ; 
An' aye a rantin' kirn we gat, 

An' just on Halloween 

It fell that night 

'Our stibble-rig was Rab M'Graen, 

A clever, sturdy fallow ; 
His sin gat Eppie Sim wi' wean, 

That liv'd in Achmacalla; 
He gat hemp-seed,ii I mind it weel, 

An' he made unco light o't : 
But mony a day was by himsel, 

He was sae sairly frighted 

That vera night.* 

Then up gat fechtin' Jamie Fleck, 

An' he swoor by his conscience 
That he could saw hemp-seed a peck; 

For it was a* but nonsense : 
The auld guidman raught down the pock, 

An' out a handfu' gied him; 
Syne bad him sHp frae 'mang the folk, 

Sometime when nae ane see'd him. 
An' try't that night. 



delirious 



One harvest, Sher- 

riflFmuir 
remember, last 

night 
young girl 



grain, extremely 

rollicking harvest- 
home 



chief harvester 



son, child 



very 

beside himself 

sorely 



fighting 

sow 

merely 

reached, bag 

gave 

Then 

saw 



214 



BURNS 



staggering 
dung-fork 
trails, back 



He marches thro* amang the stacks, 

Tho' he was something sturtin'; 
The graip he for a harrow taks, 

An' haurls at his curpin : 
An' ev'ry now an' then, he says, 

'Hemp-seed! I saw thee, 
An' her that is to be my lass 

Come after me an' draw thee 

As fast this night/ 



scared, awe-struck 



groan 

shoulder, gave, 

peep 
summersault 



halting 

hunchbacked 
Marian 



the sow 
Astir 

have gone 
winnow 
alone 
put 



He whistled up Lord Lennox' march, 

To keep his courage cheery; 
Altho' his hair began to arch, 

He was sae fley'd an' eerie : 
Till presently he hears a squeak, 

An' then a grane an' gruntle; 
He by his shouther gae a keek, 

An' tumbl'd wi' a wintle 

Out-owre that night. 

He roar'd a horrid murder-shout, 

In dreadfu* desperation! 
An' young an' auld come rinnin' out. 

An' hear the sad narration : 
He swoor 'twas hilchin Jean M'Craw, 

Or crouchie Merran Humphie, 
Till stop! she trotted thro' them a'; 

An* wha was it but grumphie 

Asteer that night! 

Meg fain wad to the barn gane 

To winn three wechts o' naething;i2 
But for to meet the Deil her lane, 

She pat but little faith in: 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 215 



She gies the herd a pickle nits, 

And twa red-cheekit apples, 
To watch, while for the barn she sets, 

In hopes to see Tarn Kipples 
That very night. 

She turns the key wi' cannie thraw, 

An' owre the threshold ventures; 
But first on Sawnie gies a ca'. 

Syne bauldly in she enters; 
A ratton rattl'd up the wa*, 

An' she cried 'Lord preserve herl* 
An' ran thro' midden-hole an' a'. 

An' pray'd wi' zeal an' fervour 

Fu' fast that night. 

They hoy't out Will, wi' sair advice ; 

They hecht him some fine braw ane; 
It chanced the stack he faddom'd thrice^^ 

Was timmer-propt for thrawin' : 
He taks a swirlie auld moss-oak 

For some black gruesome carlin ; 
An' loot a winze, an' drew a stroke. 

Till skin in blypes cam haurlin' 

Aff's nieves that night. 

A wanton widow Leezie was, 

As cantie as a kittlin; 
But och ! that night, amang the shaws. 

She gat a fearfu' settlin' ! 
She thro' the whins, an' by the cairn, 

An* owre the hill gaed scrievin'; 
Where three laird's lands met at a burn,i* 

To dip her left sark-sleeve in. 

Was bent that night. 



herd-boy, few 



cautious 


twist 


call 




Then 




rat 




dunghill 


pool 



urged 
promised 

measured without- 
stretched arms 

against leaning 
over 

gnarled 

beldam 

uttered a curse 
shreds, peeling 
Off his fists 



lively 
woods 

gorse, stone heap 
careering 

shirt' 



216 



BURNS 



Waterfall 
wound 
ledge 
eddy 



peeped 



ferns, hillside 



unhoused heifer 

gave a low 

almost leapt, 

sheath 
lark high 

foot 



1715 Rebellion 
empty 



wot 
strange 



Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, 

As thro' the glen it wimpled; 
Wh3^1es round a rocky scaur it strays; 

Whyles in a wiel it dimpled; 
Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays, 

Wi' bickering, dancing dazzle; 
Whyles cookit underneath the braes, 

Below the spreading hazel, 

Unseen that night. 

Amang the brackens on the brae. 

Between her an' the moon, 
The Deil, or else an outler quey, 

Gat up an' gae a croon : 
Poor Leezie's heart maist lap the hool; 

Near lav'rock height she jumpit, 
But miss'd a fit, an' in the pool 

Out-owre the lugs she plumpit, 

Wi' a plunge that night. 

In order, on the clean hearth-stane, 

The luggiesis three are ranged; 
And every time great care is ta'en, 

To see them duly changed : 
Auld uncle John, wha wedlock's joys 

Sin' Mar's year did desire, 
Because he gat the toom dish thrice, 

He heav'd them on the fire 

In wrath that night. 

Wi' merry sangs, an' friendly cracks, 

I wat they did na weary; 
And unco tales, an* funny jokes, — 

Their sports were cheap and cheery; 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 217 

Till butter'd sow'ns,i^' wi' fragrant lunt, smoke 

Set a' their gabs a-steerin' ; tongues wagging 

Syne, wi' a social glass o' strunt, Then, liquor 

They parted aff careerin' 

Fu' blythe that night. 



FOOT-NOTES TO HALLOWEEN 

[The foot-notes to this poem are those supplied by Burns himself 
in the Kilmarnock edition.] 

1 Is thought to be a night when witches, devils, and other mis- 
chief-making beings, are all abroad on their baneful, midnight er- 
rands: particularly, those aerial people, the fairies, are said, on that 
night to hold a grand anniversary. 

- Certain little, romantic, rocky, green hills, in the neighbourhood 
of the ancient seat of the Earls of Cassilis. 

^A noted cavern near Colean-house, called the Cove of Colean; 
which, as well as Cassilis Downans, is famed in country story for be- 
ing a favourite haunt of fairies, 

* The famous family of that name, the ancestors of Robert, the 
great Deliverer of his country, were Earls of Carrick. 

' The first ceremony of Halloween is pulling each a stock, or plant 
of kail. They must go out, hand in hand, with eyes shut, and pull 
the first they meet with: its being big or little, straight or crooked, 
is prophetic of the size and shape of the grand object of all their 
spells — the husband or wife. If any yird, or earth, stick to the root, 
that is tocher, or fortune; and the taste of the custoc, that is, the 
heart of the stem, is indicative of the natural temper and disposition. 
Lastly the stems, or to give them their ordinary appellation, the 
runts, are placed somewhere above the head of the door; and the 
Christian names of the people whom chance brings into the house, 
are, according to the priority of placing the runts, the names in 
question. 

® They go to the barn-yard, and pull each, at three several times, 
a stalk of oats. If the third stalk wants the top pickle, that is, the 
grain at the top of the stalk, the party in question will want the 
maidenhead. 

' When the corn is in a doubtful state, by being too green, or 
wet, the stack-builder, by means of old timber, etc., makes a large 
apartment in his stack, with an opening in the side which is fairest 
exposed to the wind: this he calls a fause-house. 

* Burning the nuts is a favourite charm. They name the lad and 
lass to each particular nut, as they lay them in the fire; and accord- 
ing as they burn quickly together, or start from beside one another, 
the course and issue of the courtship will be. 

" Whoever would with success try thia spell must strictly observe 



218 BURNS 

these directions. Steal out all alone to the kiln, and darkling, throw 
into the pot, a clue of blue yarn: wind it in a new clue off the old 
one; and towards the latter end, something will hold the thread: de- 
mand, wha hands f i. e., who holds? and answer will be returned 
from the kiln-pot, by naming the Christian and surname of your 
future spouse. 

" Take a candle and go alone to a looking glass : eat an apple be- 
fore it, and some traditions say you should comb your hair all the 
time; the face of your conjugal companion to be will be seen in the 
glass, as if peeping over your shoulder. 

"Steal out, unperceived, and sow a handful of hemp seed; har- 
rowing it with anything you can conveniently draw after you. Re- 
peat^ now and then, "Hemp seed, I saw [sow] thee. Hemp seed, I 
saw thee; and him (or her) that is to be my true-love, come after 
me and pou thee." Look over your left shoulder, and you will see 
the appearance of the person invoked, in the attitude of pulling 
hemp. Some traditions say, "come after me and shaw thee," that is, 
show thyself; in which case it simply appears. Others omit the 
harrowing, and say, "come after me and harrow thee." 

^ This charm must likewise be performed, unperceived and alone. 
You go to the barn, and open both doors; taking them off the hinges, 
if possible; for there is danger that the Being about to appear may 
shut the doors, and do you some mischief. Then take that instru- 
ment used in winnowing the corn, which, in our country-dialect, we 
call a wecht; and go thro' all the attitudes of letting down corn 
against the wind. Repeat it three times; and the third time, an ap- 
parition will pass thro' the barn, in at the windy door, and out at 
the other, having both the figure in question and the appearance or 
retinue, marking the employment or station in life. 

^2 Take an opportunity of going, unnoticed, to a bear-stack, and 
fathom it three times round. The last fathom of the last time, you 
will catch in your arms the appearance of your conjugal yoke-fellow. 

" You go out, one or more, for this is a social spell, to a south- 
running spring or rivulet, where "three lairds' lands meet," and dip 
your left shirt sleeve. Go to bed in sight of a fire, and hang your 
wet sleeve before it to dry. Lie awake, and sometime near midnight, 
an apparition having the exact figure of the grand object in question, 
will come and turn the sleeve, as if to dry the other side of it. 

*^Take three dishes; put clean water in one, foul water in an- 
other, and leave the third empty: blindfold a person, and lead him 
to the hearth where the dishes are ranged; he (or she) dips the left 
hand: if by chance in the clean water, the future husband or wife 
will come to the bar of matrimony, a maid; if in the foul, a widow; 
if in the empty dish, it foretells, with equal certainty, no marriage at 
all. It is repeated three times; and every time the arrangement of 
the dishes is altered. 

" Sowens, with butter instead of milk to them, is always the 
Halloween supper. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 219 

In The Twa Dogs we have an entirely differ- 
ent method. Burns here gives expression to his 
social philosophy in a contrast between rich and 
poor, and adds a quaint humor to his criticism 
by placing it in the mouths of the laird's New- 
foundland and the cotter's collie. The dogs 
themselves are delightfully and vividly charac- 
terized, and their comments have a detachment 
that frees the satire from acerbity without ren- 
dering it tame. The account of the life of the 
idle rich may be that of a somewhat remote ob- 
server; it has still value as a record of how 
the peasant views the proprietor. But that of 
the hard-working farmer lacks no touch of actu- 
ality, and is part of the reverse side of the shield 
shown in The Cotter's Saturday Night. Yet the 
tone is not querulous, but echoes rather the quiet 
conviction that if toil is hard it has its own sweet- 
ness, and that honest fatigue is better than bore- 
dom. 

THE TWA DOGS 

'Twas in that place o' Scotland's Isle, 
That bears the name o' auld King Coil, 
Upon a bonnie day in June, 
When wearin* through the afternoon, 
Twa dogs, that werena thrang at hame, ^"^y 

Forgather'd ance upon a time. M^' 



220 



BURNS 



The first I'll name, they ca'd him Caesar, 
Was keepit for his Honour's pleasure; 
His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs, 
Show'd he was nane o' Scotland's dogs, 
But whalpit some place far abroad. 
Where sailors gang to fish for cod. 
His locked, letter'd, braw brass collar, 
Shew'd him the gentleman and scholar; 

But though he was o' high degree, 

The fient a pride, nae pride had he; 

But wad hae spent ane hour caressin* 

E'en wi' a tinkler-gipsy's messan : 

At kirk or market, mill or smiddie, 

Nae tawted tyke, though e'er sae duddie, 

But he wad stand as glad to see him, 

An' stroan'd on stanes an' hillocks wi' him. 

The tither was a ploughman's collie, 
A rhyming, ranting, raving billie ; 
Wha for his friend and comrade had him. 
And in his freaks had Luath ca'd him, 
After some dog in Highland sang. 
Was made lang syne — Lord knows how lang. 



He was a gash an' faithfu' tyke. 
As ever lap a sheugh or dyke ; 
His honest, sonsie, bawsent face 
Aye gat him friends in ilka place. 
His breast was white, his tousie back 
Weel clad wi' coat o' glossy black : 
His gawsie tail, wi' upward curl, 
Hung o'er his hurdies wi' ^ swirl. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 221 



Nac doubt but tlicy were fain o' itber, 
And unco pack and thick thegither ; 
Wi' social nose whylcs snuff'd and snowkit; 
Whyles mice and moudieworts they howkit; 
Whyles scour'd awa in lang excursion, 
And worried ither in diversion ; 
Until wi' daffin' weary grown, 
Upon a knowe they sat them down, 
And there began a lang digression 
About the lords of the creation. 



gJad 
intimate 

moles, dug 



merriment 
knoll 



CAESAR 



I've aften wonder'd, honest Luath, 
What sort o' life poor dogs like you have ; 
An' when the gentry's life I saw, 
What way poor bodies liv'd ava. 

Our Laird gets in his racked rents. 
His coals, his kain, and a' his stents ; 
He rises when he likes himsel' ; 
His flunkies answer at the bell : 
He ca's his coach ; he ca's his horse ; 
He draws a bonny silken purse 
As lang's my tail, where, through the steeks, 
The yellow-letter'd Geordie keeks. 

Frae morn to e'en it's nought but toiling 
At baking, roasting, frying, boiling ; 
And though the gentry first are stechin'. 
Yet e'en the ha' folk fill their pechan 
Wi' sauce, ragouts, and sic like trashtrie, 
That's little short o' downright wastrie. 
Our whipper-in, wee blastit wonner! 
Poor worthless elf ! it eats a dinner 



at all 

rent in kind, dues 

calls 

stitches 
guinea peeps 



cramming 
servants, belly 
rubbish 
waste 
wonder 



222 



BURNS 



put» paunch 



Better than ony tenant man » 

His Honour has in a' the Ian"; 
An' what poor cot-folk pit their painch in, 
I own it's past my comprehension. 



LUATH 



troubled 
digging, ditch 
building, wall 
clearing 



brood, ragged 

children 
hand-labor 

thatch, rope 



almost 

must 

knew 

stout lads, girls 



Trowth, Caesar, whyles they're fash'd eneugh: 
A cottar howkin' in a sheugh, 
Wi' dirty stanes biggin' a dyke, 
Baring a quarry, and sic Hke; 
Himsel', a wife, he thus sustains, 
A smytrie o' wee duddy weans. 
And nought but his han'-darg to keep 
Them right and tight in thack and rape. 
And when they meet wi' sair disasters, 
Like loss o' health, or want o' masters, 
Ye maist wad think, a wee touch langer 
And they maun starve o' cauld and hunger; 
But how it comes I never kent yet, 
They're maistly wonderfu' contented; 
An' buirdly chiels and clever hizzies 
Are bred in sic a way as this is. 



CAESAR 



badger 



But then, to see how ye're negleckit. 
How huflf'd, and cuff'd, and disrespeckit, 
Lord, man ! our gentry care sae little 
For delvers, ditchers and sic cattle; 
They gang as saucy by poor folk 
As I wad by a stinking brock. 

I've noticed, on our Laird's court-day, 
An* mony a time my heart's been wae, 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 223 



Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash, 
How they maun thole a factor's snash ; 
He'll stamp and threaten, curse and swear, 
He'll apprehend them ; poind their gear : 
While they maun stan', wi' aspect humble, 
An' hear it a', an' fear an' tremble ! 
I see how folk live that hae riches ; 
But surely poor folk maun be wretches I 



endure, abuse 



seize, property 
must 



LUATH 



They're no' sae wretched's ane wad think, 
Though constantly on poortith's brink: 
They're sae accustom'd wi' the sight, 
The view o't gi'es them little fright. 

Then chance and fortune are sae guided. 
They're aye in less or mair provided ; 
An' though fatigued wi' close employment, 
A blink o' rest's a sweet enjoyment. 

The dearest comfort o' their lives, 
Their grushie weans an' faithfu' wives; 
The prattling things are just their pride, 
That sweetens a' their fireside. 

And whyles twalpenny-worth o' nappy 
Can mak the bodies unco happy; 
They lay aside their private cares 
To mind the Kirk and State affairs : 
They'll talk o' patronage and priests, 
Wi' kindling fury in their breasts ; 
Or tell what new taxation's comin'. 
And ferlie at the folk in Lon'on. 

As bleak-faced Hallowmas returns 
They get the jovial rantin* kirns, 



poverty's 



growing 



quart of ale 
wonderfully 



wonder 



harvest-homes 



224 



BURNS 



le, foam 



smoking, snuff- 
box 



cheerful, talking 
brightly 



too often 



well-doing 



perhaps, busy 
indenturing 



When rural life o' every station 
Unite in common recreation ; 
Love blinks, Wit slaps, and social Mirth 
Forgets there's Care upo' the earth. 

That merry day the year begins 
They bar the door on frosty win's ; 
The nappy reeks wi' mantHng ream, 
And sheds a heart-inspiring steam ; 
The luntin' pipe and sneeshin'-mill 
Are handed round wi' right gude-will ; 
The canty auld folk crackin' crouse, 
The young anes ranting through the house- 
My heart has been sae fain to see them 
That I for joy hae barkit wi' them. 

Still it's owre true that ye hae said, 
Sic game is now owre aften play'd. 
There's mony a creditable stock 
O' decent, honest, fawsont folk, 
Are riven out baith root and branch 
Some rascal's pridefu' greed to quench, 
Wha thinks to knit himsel the faster 
In favour wi' some gentle master, 
Wha, aiblins, thrang a-parliamentin'. 
For Britain's gude his soul indentin — 



CAESAR 



going 



Haith, lad, ye little ken about it; 

For Britain's gude! — guid faith! I doubt it! 

Say rather, gaun as Premiers lead him, 

And saying ay or no's they bid him ! 

At operas and plays parading, 

Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 225 



Or maybe, in a frolic daft, 
To Hague or Calais taks a waft, 
To make a tour, an' tak a whirl, 
To learn bon ton an' see the worl'. 

There, at Vienna, or Versailles, 
He rives his father's auld entails ; 
Or by Madrid he takes the rout, 
To thrum guitars and fecht wi' nowt; 
Or down Italian vista startles. 
Whore-hunting amang groves o' myrtles ; 
Then bouses drumly German water, 
To make himsel' look fair and fatter. 
And clear the consequential sorrows. 
Love-gifts of Carnival signoras. 
For Britain's gude !— for her destruction 1 
Wi' dissipation, feud, and faction! 



splits 

fight with bulls 
courses 

muddy 



LUATH 



Hech man ! dear sirs ! is that the gate 
They waste sae mony a braw estate? 
Are we sae foughten and harass'd 
For gear to gang that gate at last? 

O would they stay aback frae courts, 
An' please themselves wi' country sports, 
It wad for every ane be better, 
The laird, the tenant, an' the cotter ! 
For thae frank, rantin', ramblin' billies, 
Fient haet o' them's ill-hearted fellows: 
Except for breakin' o' their timmer. 
Or speaking hghtly o' their limmer. 
Or shootin' o' a hare or moor-cock, 
The ne'er-a-bit they're ill to poor folk. 



way 



troubled 
money, go, way 



those 
Devil a bit 
wasting, timber 
mistress 



226 



BURNS 



touch 



But will ye tell me, Master Caesar? 
Sure great folk's life's a life o' pleasure; 
Nae cauld nor hunger e'er can steer them, 
The very thought o't needna fear them. 



CAESAR 



sometimes 



hard 

gripes, groans 



fret 



dozens 
positive 
devil a bit 



Lord, man, were ye but whyles where I am. 
The gentles ye wad ne'er envy 'em, 

It's true, they needna starve or sweat, 
Thro' winter's cauld or simmer's heat; 
They've nae sair wark to craze their banes. 
An' fill auld age wi' grips an' granes: 
But human bodies are sic fools. 
For a' their colleges and schools, 
That v/hen nae real ills perplex them. 
They make enow themselves to vex them. 
An' aye the less they hae to sturt them, 
In Hke proportion less will hurt them. 
A country fellow at the pleugh. 
His acres till'd, he's right eneugh; 
A country lassie at her wheel. 
Her dizzens done, she's unco weel; 
But gentlemen, an' ladies warst, 
Wi' ev'ndown want o' wark are curst. 
They loiter, lounging, lank, and lazy; 
Though de'il haet ails them, yet uneasy; 
Their days insipid, dull, and tasteless; 
Their nights unquiet, lang, and restless. 
And e'en their sports, their balls, and races, 
Their galloping through public places ; 
There's sic parade, sic pomp and art, 
The joy can scarcely reach the heart 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 227 



The men cast out in party matches, 
Then sowther a' in deep debauches : 
Ae night they're mad wi' drink and whoring, 
Neist day their Hfe is past enduring. 
The ladies arm-in-arm, in clusters, 
As great and gracious a' as sisters ; 
But hear their absent thoughts o' ither, 
They're a' run de'ils and jades thegither. 
Whyles, owre the wee bit cup and platie, 
They sip the scandal-potion pretty; 
Or lee-lang nights, wi' crabbit leuks, 
Pore owre the devil's picture beuks ; 
Stake on a chance a farmer's stack -3^ard, 
And cheat like ony unhang'd blackguard. 

There's some exception, man and woman ; 
But this is gentry's life in common. 



quarrel 
solder 
One 
Next 



downright 



live-long, crabbed 

tooks 
playing-cards 



By this the sun was out o' sight, 
And darker gloamin* brought the night; 
The bum-clock humm'd wi' lazy drone. 
The kye stood rowtin' i' the loan ; 
When up they gat and shook their lugs, 
Rejoiced they werena men but dogs ; 
And each took aff his several way. 
Resolved to meet some ither day. 

The satirical tendency becomes more evident 
in The Holy Fair. The personifications whom 
the poet meets on the way to the reb'gious orgy 
are Superstition, Hypocrisy, and Fun, and sym- 
boHze exactly the elements in his treatment — two- 
thirds satire and one-third humorous sympathy. 



twilight 

cockchafer 

cattle, lowing, 

lane 
ears 



228 BURNS 

The handling of the preachers is in the manner 
we have already observed in the other ecclesias- 
tical satires, but there is less animus and more 
vividness. Nothing could be more admirable in 
its way than the realism of the picture of the 
congregation, whether at the sermons or at their 
refreshments; and, as in Halloween, the union of 
the particular and the universal appears in the 
essential applicability of the psychology to an 
American camp-meeting as well as to a Scottish 
sacrament — 

There's some are fou o' love divine, 
There's some are fou o' brandy, 

^ — not to finish the stanza! 

THE HOLY FAIR 

A robe of seeming truth and trust 

Hid crafty Observation; 
And secret hung, with poison'd crust. 

The dirk of Defamation: 
A mask that like the gorget show'd. 

Dye-varying on the pigeon; 
And for a mantle large and broad. 

He wrapt him in religion. 

Hypocrisy a la Mode. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 229 



Upon a simmer Sunday morn, 

When Nature's face is fair, 
I walked forth to view the corn, 

An' snuff the caller air. 
The risin' sun, owre Galston muirs, 

Wi' glorious light was glintin' ; 
The hares were hirplin' down the furrs, 

The lav'rocks they were chantin' 
Fu' sweet that day. 

As lightsomely I glowr'd abroad. 

To see a scene sae gay, 
Three hizzies, early at the road. 

Cam skelpin' up the way. 
Twa had manteeles o' dolefu' black, 

But ane wi' lyart lining; 
The third, that gaed a wee a-back, 

Was in the fashion shining 

Fu' gay that day. 

The twa appeared like sisters twin, 

In feature, form, an' claes ; 
Their visage wither'd, lang an' thin, 

An' sour as ony slaes : 
The third cam up, hap-stap-an'-lowp, 

As light as ony lambie, 
An' wi' a curchie low did stoop. 

As soon as e'er she saw me, 

Fu* kind that day. 

Wi' bonnet aff, quoth I, 'Sweet lass, 

I think ye seem to ken me; 
I'm sure I've seen that bonnie face, 

But yet I canna name ye.' 



fresh 



limping, furrows 
larks 



stared 

girls 

scudding 

gray 

went a little 



sloes 

hop-step-and- 
jump 



curtsey 



230 



BURNS 



most 



rent 



mirth 
wrinkled 



shirt 



porridge 



complacent, attire 

jogging 

strapping young- 
sters 
over 

padding, in 
crowds 

slice 
cakes 



crisp 



Quo* she, an' laughin' as she spak, 

An' taks me by the hands, 
'Ye, for my sake, hae gi'en the feck 

Of a' the ten commands 

A screed some day. 

*My name is Fun — ^your crony dear. 

The nearest friend ye hae; 
An' this is Superstition here. 

An' that's Hypocrisy 
I'm gaun to MauchHne Holy Fair, 

To spend an hour in daffin' : 
Gin ye'll go there, yon runkled pair. 

We will get famous laughin' 

At them this day.' 

Quoth I, *Wi' a' my heart, I'll do't; 

I'll get my Sunday's sark on. 
An' meet you on the holy spot; 

Faith, we'se hae fine remarkin'!* 
Then I gaed hame at crowdie-time, 

An' soon I made me ready; 
For roads were clad, frae side to side, 

Wi' mony a wearie bodie 

In droves that day. 

Here farmers gash in ridin' graith 

Gaed hoddin* by their cotters ; 
There swankies young in braw braid-claith 

Are springin' owre the gutters. 
The lasses, skelpin' barefit, thrang, 

In silks an' scarlets glitter, 
Wi' sweet-milk cheese, in mony a whang, 

An* farls bak'd wi' butter, 

Fu' crump that day. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 231 



When by the plate we set our nose, 

Weel heaped up wi' ha'pence, 
A greedy glow'r Black Bonnet throws, 

An' we maun draw our tippence. 
Then in we go to see the show: 

On ev'ry side they're gath'rin'; 
Some carryin' deals, some chairs an' stools. 

An' some are busy bleth'rin' 

Right loud that day. 

Here stands a shed to fend the show'rs. 

An' screen our country gentry; 
There racer Jess an' twa-three whores 

Are blinkin' at the entry. 
Here sits a raw o' tittlin' jades, 

Wi' heavin' breasts an' bare neck, 
An' there a batch o' wabster lads, 

Blackguardin' frae Kilmarnock 
For fun this day. 

Here some are thinkin' on their sins. 

An' some upo' their claes ; 
Ane curses feet that fyl'd his shins, 

Anither sighs an* prays : 
On this hand sits a chosen swatch, 

Wi' screw'd up, grace-proud faces; 
On that a set o' chaps, at watch, 

Thrang winkin' on the lasses 

To chairs that day. 

O happy is that man an' blest! 

Nae wonder that it pride him! 
Whase ain dear lass, that he likes best. 

Comes clinkin* down beside him! 



the elder 



planks 
gabbling 



keep off 



whispering 



clothes 
soiled 

sample 
Busy 



Sits snugly 



232 BURNS 

Wi* arm repos'd on the chair-back 
He sweetly does compose him; 

Which, by degrees, sHps round her neck, 
And his palm An's loof upon her bosom. 

Unacknowledged Unkenn'd that day. 

Now a' the congregation o'er 
Is silent expectation ; 
climbs to For Moodie speels the holy door, 

Wi' tidings o' damnation. 
Satan Should Hornie, as in ancient days, 

'Mang sons o' God present him. 
The very sight o' Hoodie's face 
his own hot To's ain liet hame had sent him 

Wi' fright that day. 

Hear how he clears the points o' faith 

Wi' rattlin' an' wi' thumpin' ! 
Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath, 

He's stampin' an' he's jumpin'! 
His lengthen'd chin, his turned-up snout, 
weird His eldritch squeal an' gestures, 

O how they fire the heart devout, 
Like cantharidian plaisters, 
such On sic a day! 

But, hark ! the tent has chang'd its voice ; 

There's peace an' rest nae langer ; 
For a' the real judges rise. 
They canna sit for anger. 
A New Light Smith opens out his cauld harangues. 

On practice and on morals ; 
An' aff the godly pour in thrangs 
^'^® To gie the jars an' barrels 

A lift that day. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 233 



What signifies his barren shine 

Of moral pow'rs an' reason? 
His English style an' gesture fine 

Are a' clean out o' season. 
Like Socrates or Antonine, 

Or some auld pagan Heathen, 
The moral man he does define, 

But ne'er a word o' faith in 

That's right that day. 

In guid time comes an antidote 

Against sic poison'd nostrum ; 
For Peebles, frae the water-fit, 

Ascends the holy rostrum : 
See, up he's got the word o' God, 

An' meek an' mim has view'd it, 
While Common Sense^ has ta'en the road, 

An' aff, an' up the Cowgate 

Fast, fast, that day. 

Wee Miller, neist, the Guard relieves, 

An' Orthodoxy raibles, 
Tho' in his heart he weel believes 

An' thinks it auld wives' fables : 
But, faith ! the birkie wants a Manse, 

So cannilie he hums them; 
Altho' his carnal wit an' sense 

Like hafflins-wise o'ercomes him 
At times that day. 

Now, butt an' ben, the Change-house fills, 
Wi' yill-caup Commentators ; 

Here's crying out for bakes an' gills, 
An' there the pint-stowp clatters; 
^ The rationalism of the New Lights. 



river-mouth 



pnm 



next 

rattles by rote 



fellow 

prudently, hum- 
bugs 



nearly half 



outer and inner 

rooms 
ale-cup 

rolls 



234 



BURNS 



While thick an' thrang, an' loud an' lang, 

Wi' logic, an' wi' Scripture, 
They raise a din, that in the end 

Is like to breed a rupture 

O' wrath that day. 

Leeze me on drink ! it gi'es us mair 

Than either school or college : 
It kindles wit, it waukens lair, 

It pangs us fou o' knowledge. 
Be't whisky gill, or penny wheep, 

Or ony stronger potion, 
It never fails, on drinkin' deep, 

To kittle up our notion 

By night or day. 

The lads an' lasses, blythely bent 

To mind baith saul an' body, 
Sit round the table, weel content, 

An' steer about the toddy. 
On this ane's dress, an' that ane's leuk, 

They're makin observations ; 
While some are cosy i' the neuk, 

An' formin* assignations 

To meet some day. 

But now the Lord's ain trumpet touts, 

Till a' the hills are rairin'. 
An' echoes back return the shouts; 

Black Russel is na sparin' : 
His piercing words, like Highlan' swords, 

Divide the joints an' marrow; 
His talk o' Hell, where devils dwell, 

Our very 'sauls does harrow' 

Wi* fright that day! 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 235 



A vast, unbottom'd, boundless pit, 

Fill'd fou o' lowin' brunstane, 
Whase ragin' flame, an' scorchin' heat, 

Wad melt the hardest whun-stane I 
The half-asleep start up wi' fear 

An' think they hear it roarin' 
When presently it does appear 

'Twas but some neebor snorin* 
Asleep that day. 

*Twad be owre lang a tale to tell 

How mony stories past, 
An' how they crowded to the yill, 

When they were a' dismist; 
How drink gaed round, in cogs an' caups, 

Amang the furms and benches ; 
An' cheese an' bread, frae women's laps, 

Was dealt about in lunches, 

An* dawds that day. 

In comes a gawsie, gash guidwife, 

An' sits down by the fire, 
Syne draws her kebbuck an' her knife; 

The lasses they are shyer. 
The auld guidmen, about the grace, 

Frae side to side they bother. 
Till some ane by his bonnet lays, 

An' gi'es them't like a tether, 

Fu' lang that day, 

Waesucks! for him that gets nae lass, 
Or lasses that hae naething! 

Sma' need has he to say a grace, 
Or melvie his braw claithing! 



full, flaming brim' 
stone 



ale 



wooden drinking 
vessels 



full portions 
lumps 

jolly, sensible 
Then, cheese 



rope 



Alas! 



make dusty 



236 



BURNS 



such 

Bell-ringer, rope 
swing, toll 
can 

gaps, lads 

shoes 

chat 



before 



fornication 



O wives, be mindfu', ance yoursel 
How bonnie lads ye wanted, 

An* dinna for a kebbuck-heel 
Let lasses be affronted 

On sic a day! 

Now Clinkumbell, wi' rattlin' tow, 

Begins to jow an' croon; 
Some swagger hame the best they dow, 

Some wait the afternoon. 
At slaps the billies halt a blink. 

Till lasses strip their shoon : 
Wi' faith an' hope, an* love an' drink, 

They're a' in famous tune 

For crack that day. 

How mony hearts this day converts 

O' sinners and o' lasses ! 
Their hearts o' stane, gin night, are gane 

As saft as ony flesh is. 
There's some are fou o' love divine, 

There's some are fou o' brandy; 
An* mony jobs that day begin, 

May end in houghmagandie 

Some ither day. 



It must be admitted that, as we pass from poem 
to poem, Scottish mamiers are becoming freer, 
Scottish drink is more potent, Scottish rehgion 
is no longer pure and undefiled. Yet the poet 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 237 

. hardly seems to be at a disadvantage. He cer- 
( tainly is no less interesting; he impresses our im- 
aginations and rouses our sympathetic under- 
standing as keenly as ever ; there is no abatement 
of our esthetic relish. 

We have seen the Ayrshire peasant alone with 
his family, at social gatherings, and at church. 
We have to see him with his cronies and at the 
tavern. Scotch manners and Scotch religion we 
know now; it is the turn of Scotch drink. The 
spirit of that conviviality which was one of 
Burns's ruling passions, and which in his class 
helped to color the grayness of daily hardship, 
was rendered by him in verse again and again : 
never more triumphantly than in the greatest of 
his bacchanalian songs, IVillic Brew'd a Peck o' 
Mauf. Indeed it would be hard to find anywhere 
in our literature a more revealing utterance of 
those effects of alcohol that are not discussed in 
scientific literature — the joyous exhilaration, the 
conviction of (comparative) sobriety, the tem- 
porary intensification of the feeling of good fel- 
lowship. The challenge to the moon is unsur- 
passable in its unconscious humor. Yet Arnold 
thought the world of Scotch drink unbeautiful. 



238 BURNS 

WILLIE BREW'D A PECK O' MAUT 



malt 



live-long 

would not have, 
Christendom 



drunk 
droplet 
crow, dawn 
brew 



O, Willie brew'd a peck o' maut, 
And Rob and Allan cam to see ; 

Three blyther hearts, that lee-lang night, 
Ye wad na found in Christendie. 

We are na fou', we're nae that fou, 
But just a drappie in our e'e; 

The cock may craw, the day may daw, 
And aye we'll taste the barley-bree. 



shining, sky, high 
entice 



go 
rascal 



Here are we met, three merry boys, 
Three merry boys, I trow, are we ; 

And mony a night we've merry been, 
And mony mae we hope to be ! 

It is the moon, I ken her horn, 
That's blinkin' in the lift sae hie; 

She shines sae bright to wyle us hame. 
But, by my sooth ! she'll wait a wee. 

Wha first shall rise to gang awa, 
A cuckold, coward loun is he ! 

Wha first beside his chair shall fa*, 
He is the King amang us three ! 



With greater daring and on a broader canvas 
Bums has dealt with the same subject in The 
Jolly Beggars. For the literary treatment of the 
theme he had hints from Ramsay, in whose Merry 
Beggars and Happy Beggars groups of half a 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 239 

dozen male and female characters proclaim their 
views and join in a chorus in praise of drink. 
More direct suggestion for the setting of his 
*'cantata" came from a night visit made by the 
poet and two of his friends to the low alehouse 
kept by Nancy Gibson ("Poosie Nansie") in 
Mauchline.. The poem was written in 1785, but 
Burns never published it and seems almost to 
have forgotten its existence. 

It is impossible to exaggerate the unpromising 
nature of the theme. The place is a den of cor- 
ruption, the characters are the dregs of society. 
A group of tramps and criminals have gathered 
at the end of their day's wanderings to drink the 
very rags from their backs and wallow in shame- 
less incontinence. An old soldier and a quondam 
"daughter of the regiment," a mountebank and 
his tinker sweetheart, a female pickpocket whose 
Highland bandit lover has been hanged, a fiddler 
at fairs who aspires to comfort her but is outdone 
by a tinker, a lame ballad-singer and his three 
wives, one of whom consoles the fiddler in the 
face of her husband — such is the choice com- 
pany. The action is mere by-play, drunken love 
making; the main point is the songs. They are 
mostly frank autobiography, all pervaded with 



240 BURNS 

the gaiety that comes from the conviction that be- 
ing at the bottom, they need not be anxious about 
falHng. Wine, women, and song are their enthu- 
siasms, and only the song is above the lowest pos- 
sible level. 

Such is the sordid material out of which Burns 
wrought his greatest imaginative triumph. To 
take the reader into such a haunt and have him 
pass the evening in such company, not with dis- 
gust and nausea but with relish and joy, is an 
achievement that stands beside the creation of the 
scenes in the Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap. 
It is accomplished by virtue of the intensity of the 
poet's imaginative sympathy with human nature 
even in its most degraded forms, and by his 
power of finding utterance for the moods of the 
characters he conceives. The dramatic power 
which we have noted in a certain group of the 
songs here reaches its height, and in making the 
reader respond to it he avails himself of all his 
literary faculties. Pungent phrasing, a sense of 
the squalid picturesque, a humorous appreciation 
of human weakness, and a superb command of 
rollicking rhythms — these elements of his equip- 
ment are particularly notable. But the whole 
thing is fused ^nd unified by a wQnderfuI vitality 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 241 

that makes the reading of it an actual experience. 
And, though several of the songs are in English, 
there is no moralizing, no alien note of any kind 
to jar the perfection of its harmony. Scottish lit- 
erature had seen nothing like it since Dunbar 
made the Seven Deadly Sins dance in hell. 



THE JOLLY BEGGARS 

A Cantata 

Recitativo 

When lyart leaves bestrow the yird. 
Or, wavering like the baukie bird, 

Bedim cauld Boreas' blast; 
When hailstanes drive wi' bitter skyte, 
And infant frosts begin to bite, 

In hoary cranreuch drest; 
Ae night at e'en a merry core 

O' randie, gangrel bodies 
In Poosie Nansie's held the splore, 
To drink their orra duddies. 
Wi' quaffing and laughing, 

They ranted an' they sang; 
Wi' jumping an' thumping 
The very girdle rang. 



withered, earth 
bat 

glancing stroke 

hoar-frost 
one, gang 
rowdy, vagrant 
carousal 
spare rags 



cake-pan 



First, niest the fire, in auld red rags, 
Ane sat, weel brac'd wi' mealy bags, 

An' knapsack a' in order ; 
His doxy lay within his arm ; 



mistress 



242 



BURNS 



whisky 

leered 

flushed with drink 

smacking 

mouth 

alms 



Wi* usquebae an' blankets warm. 

She blinket on her sodger ; 
An' aye he gies the tozie drab 

The tither skelpin' kiss, 
While she held up her greedy gab, 
Just like an aumous dish : 
Ilk smack still did crack still 
Just like a cadger's whip; 
Then, swaggering an' staggering, 
He roar'd this ditty up — 

Air 
Tune: Soldier's Joy 

I am a son of Mars, who have been in many wars, 
And show my cuts and scars wherever 1 come ; 

This here was for a wench, and that other in a trench, 
When welcoming the French at the sound of the drum. 

Lai de daudle, &c. 

My 'prenticeship I past where my leader breath'd his last, 
When the bloody die was cast on the heights of Abram ; 

And I serv'd out my trade when the gallant game was 
play'd, 
And the Moro low was laid at the sound of the drum. 

I lastly was with Curtis, among the floating batt'ries, 
And there I left for witness an arm and a limb : 

Yet let my country need me, with Elliot to head me, 
I'd clatter on my stumps at the sound of a drum. 

And now, tho' I must beg, with a wooden arm and leg, 
And many a tattered rag hanging over my bum, 

I'm as happy with my wallet, my bottle, and my callet, 
As when I used in scarlet to follow a drum. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 243 

What tho' with hoary locks I must stand the winter shocks, 
Beneath the woods and rocks oftentimes for a home? 

When the t'other bag I sell, and the t'other bottle tell, 
I could meet a troop of hell at the sound of the drum. 

Recitativo 

He ended ; and the kebars sheuk 

Aboon the chorus roar; 
While frighted rattons backward leuk, 

An' seek the benmost bore. 
A fairy fiddler frae the neuk. 

He skirled out Encore! 
But up arose the martial chuck, 

And laid the loud uproar. 

Air 

Tune: Sodger Laddie 

I once was a maid, tho' I cannot tell when. 
And still my dehght is in proper young men ; 
Some one of a troop of dragoons was my daddie, 
No wonder I'm fond of a sodger laddie. 

Sing, Lai de dal, &c. 



rafters shook 

Above 

rats, look 

inmost hole 

nook 

shrieked 

darling 



The first of my loves was a swaggering blade, 
To rattle the thundering drum was his trade ; 
His leg was so tight, and his cheek was so ruddy. 
Transported I was with my sodger laddie. 



soldier 



But the godly old chaplain left him in a lurch ; 
The sword I forsook for the sake of the church; 
He risked the soul, and I ventur'd the body, — 
'Twas then I prov'd false to my sodger laddie. 



244 



BURNS 



Full soon I grew sick of my sanctified sot, 
The regiment at large for a husband I got; 
From the gilded spontoon to the fife I was ready, 
I asked no more but a sodger laddie. 

But the peace it reduced me to beg in despair, 
Till I met my old boy at a Cunningham fair ; 
His rags regimental they flutter'd so gaudy, 
My heart it rejoiced at a sodger laddie. 

And now I have liv'd — I know not how long, 

And still I can join in a cup or a song; 

But whilst with both hands I can hold the glass steady, 

Here's to thee, my hero, my sodger laddie 1 

Recitativo 

Poor Merry Andrew in the neuk 

Sat guzzling wi' a tinkler hizzie ; 
They mind't na wha the chorus teuk. 

Between themselves they were sae busy. 

At length, wi' drink and courting dizzy, 
He stoitered up an' made a face ; 

Then turn'd, an' laid a smack on Grizzy, 
Syne tun'd his pipes wi' grave grimace. 



Air 
Tune: Auld Sir Symon 

Sir Wisdom's a fool when he's fou, 
Sir Knave is a fool in a session; 

He's there but a 'prentice I trow, 
But I am a fool by profession. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 245 

My grannie she bought me a beuk, 

And I held awa to the school ; 
I fear I my talent misteuk, 

But what will ye hae of a fool? 

For drink I would venture my neck ; 

A hizzie's the half o' my craft ; 
But what could ye other expect, 

Of ane that's avowedly daft? 

I ance was tied up like a stirk, 
For civilly swearing and quaflfing; 

I ance was abused i' the kirk, 
For touzling a lass i' my daffin. 

Poor Andrew that tumbles for sport, 

Let naebody name wi' a jeer; 
There's even, I'm tauld, i' the Court, 

A tumbler ca'd the Premier. 



book 
went off 

have 

wench 

crazy 
bullock 

rebuked 
rumpling, fun 



Observ'd ye yon reverend lad 
Maks faces to tickle the mob? 

He rails at our mountebank squad — 
It's rivalship just i' the job! 

And now my conclusion I'll tell, 
For faith! I'm confoundedly dry; 

The chiel that's a fool for himsel', 
Gude Lord ! he's far dafter than I. 



fellow 



Recitativo 

Then niest outspak a raucle carlin, 
Wha kent fu' weel to cleek the sterling, 
For mony a pursie she had hookit. 
An' had in mony a well been dookit ; 



next, rough 

beldam 
steal, cash 



ducked 



246 



BURNS 



woe betide, gal- 
lows 



fine 



Lowland 



Her love had been a Highland laddie, 

But weary fa' the waefu' woodie! 

Wi' sighs and sobs, she thus began 

To wail her braw John Highlandman : — 

Air 

Tune: O An' Ye Were Dead, Guidman 

A Highland lad my love was born. 
The Lalland laws he held in scorn ; 
But he still was faithfu' to his clan, 
My gallant braw John Highlandman. 



CHORUS 

Sing hey, my braw John Highlandman ! 
Sing ho, my braw John Highlandman ! 
There's no a lad in a* the Ian' 
Was match for my John Highlandman. 



kilt 

two-handed sword 



With his philibeg an' tartan plaid, 
And gude claymore down by his side, 
The ladies' hearts he did trepan, 
My gallant braw John Highlandman. 



We ranged a' from Tweed to Spey, 
And hved like lords and ladies gay; 
For a Lalland face he feared none, 
My gallant braw John Highlandman. 



They banish'd him beyond the sea ; 
But ere the bud was on the tree, 
Adown my cheeks the pearls ran, 
Embracing my John Highlandman. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 247 

But och ! they catch'd him at the last, 

And bound him in a dungeon fast; 

My curse upon them every one ! 

They've hang'd my braw John Highlandman. 

And now a widow I must mourn 
The pleasures that will ne'er return ; 
No comfort but a hearty can, 
When I think on John Highlandman. 



Recitativo 

A pigmy scraper wi' his fiddle, 

Wha used to trysts an' fairs to driddle, 

Her strappin' limb an' gawsie middle 

(He reach'd nae higher) 
Had holed his heartie like a riddle, 

And blawn't on fire. 



markets, toddle 
buxom 



blown it 



Wi' hand on hainch, and upward e'e, 
He croon'd his gamut, one, two, three, 
Then, in an arioso key, 

The wee Apollo 
Set aff, wi' allegretto glee, 

His giga solo. 



hip 



Air 
Tune: Whistle Owre the Lave O't 

Let me ryke up to dight that tear. 
And go wi' me an' be my dear. 
And then your every care an' fear 
May whistle owre the lave o't. 



reach, wipe 



rest 



248 



BURNS 



CHORUS 

I am a fiddler to my trade, 
An' a' the tunes that e'er I playM, 
The sweetest still to wife or maid, 
Was Whistle Owre the Lave o't. 

At kirns and weddings we'se be there, 
And oh ! sae nicely's we will fare ; 
We'll bouse about, till Daddie Care 
Sing Whistle Owre the Lave o't. 

Sae merrily the banes we'll pyke. 
An' sun oursels about the dyke, 
An' at our leisure, when ye like, 
We'll — whistle owre the lave o't. 

But bless me wi' your heav'n o' charms, 
An' while I kittle hair on thairms, 
Hunger, cauld, and a' sic harms, 
May whistle owre the lave o't. 



Recitativo 

Her charms had struck a sturdy caird, 

As well as poor gut-scraper; 
He taks the fiddler by the beard, 

An' draws a roosty rapier — 
He swoor, by a' was swearing worth, 

To spit him like a pliver. 
Unless he would from that time forth 

Relinquish her for ever. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 249 



Wi' ghastly e'e, poor tweedle-dee 

Upon his hunkers bended, hams 

An' pray'd for grace wi' ruefu' face, 

An' sae the quarrel ended. 
But tho' his little heart did grieve 

When round the tinkler prest her, 
He feign'd to snirtle in his sleeve, snigger 

When thus the caird address'd her: — 

Air 
Tune: Clout the Cauldron 
My bonnie lass, I work in brass, 

A tinkler is my station ; 
I've travell'd round all Christian ground 

In this my occupation ; 
I've ta'en the gold, I've been enroll'd 

In many a noble squadron ; 
But vain they search'd when off I march'd 

To go an' clout the cauldron. 

Despise that shrimp, that wither'd imp, 

Wi' a' his noise an' caperin' ; 
An' tak a share wi' those that bear 

The budget and the apron ; 
And, by that stoup, my faith an' houp I 

And by that dear Kilbaigie, 
If e'er ye want, or meet wi' scant. 

May I ne'er weet my craigie. 

Recitativo 
The caird prevail'd— th' unblushing fair 

In his embraces sunk, 
Partly wi' love o'ercome sae sair, so sorely 

An' partly she was drunk. 



patch 



tool-bag 

hope 

a kind of whisky 

dearth 

wet, throat 



250 



BURNS 



spirit 



Sir Violino, with an air 
That show'd a man o' spunk, 

Wish'd unison between the pair, 
An' made the bottle clunk 

To their health that night. 



urchin 
trick 

hencoop 



spavm 

hobbled, leapt 

yielded them as 

lovers 
gratis 



But hurchin Cupid shot a shaft 

That play'd a dame a shavie ; 
The fiddler rak'd her fore and aft, 

Behint the chicken cavie. 
Her lord, a wight of Homer's craft, 

Tho' limpin' wi' the spavie, 
He hirpl'd up, an' lap like daft, 

And shor'd them Dainty Davie 
O' boot that night. 



enlisted 



He was a care-defying blade 

As ever Bacchus listed ; 
Tho' Fortune sair upon him laid. 

His heart she ever miss'd it. 
He had nae wish, but — to be glad. 

Nor want but — when he thirsted ; 
He hated nought but — to be sad, 

And thus the Muse suggested 
His sang that night. 



staring crowd 



Air 

Tune : For A' That, An' A' That 
I am a bard of no regard 

Wi' gentlefolks, and a' that ; 
But Homer-like, the glowrin' byke, 

Frae town to town I draw that. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 251 



CHORUS 



For a' that, an' a' that, 

And twice as muckle's a' that ; 
I've lost but ane, I've twa behin' 

I've wife eneugh for a' that. 



much 



I never drank the Muses' stank, 
Castalia's burn, an' a' that; 

But there it streams, an' richly reams ! 
My Helicon I ca' that. 



pond 
foams 



Great love I bear to a' the fair, 
Their humble slave, an' a' that ; 

But lordly will, I hold it still 
A mortal sin to thraw that. 



thwart 



In raptures sweet this hour we meet 
Wi' mutual love, an' a' that ; 

But for how lang the flee may stang. 
Let inclination law that. 



fly, sting 
regulate 



Their tricks and craft hae put me daft, 
They've ta'en me in, an' a' that; 

But clear your decks, an' Here's the sex! 
I like the jads for a' that. 



crazy 



jades 



For a' that, and a' that. 
And twice as muckle's a' that, 

My dearest bluid, to do them guid. 
They're welcome till't, for a' that. 



to it 



252 



BURNS 



Recitativo 



walls 



emptied, pokes, 

rags 
cover, tails 

flaming 

over, crowd 



untie, choose 



So sung the bard — and Nansie's wa's 
Shook with a thunder of applause, 

Re-echo*d from each mouth; 
They toom'd their pocks, an' pawn'd their duds. 
They scarcely left to co'er their fuds, 

To quench their lowin' drouth. 
Then owre again the jovial thrang 

The poet did request 
To lowse his pack, an' wale a sang, 
A ballad o' the best ; 
He rising, rejoicing, 

Between his twa Deborahs, 
Looks round him, an' found them 
Impatient for the chorus. 

Air 

Tune : Jolly Mortals, Fill Your Glasses 

See the smoking bowl before us, 

Mark our jovial ragged ring; 
Round and round take up the chorus, 

And in raptures let us sing : 

CHORUS 

A fig for those by law protected ! 

Liberty's a glorious feast! 
Courts for cowards were erected, 

Churches built to please the priest. 

What is title? what is treasure? 

What is reputation's care? 
If we lead a life of pleasure, 

'Tis no matter how or where ! 



DESCRIPTIVE—NARRATIVE 253 

With the ready trick and fable, 

Round we wander all the day; 
And at night, in barn or stable, 

Hug our doxies on the hay. 



mistresses 



Does the train-attended carriage 
Thro' the country lighter rove? 

Does the sober bed of marriage 
Witness brighter scenes of love? 

Life is all a variorum, 
We regard not how it goes ; 

Let them cant about decorum 
Who have characters to lose. 



Here's to budgets, bags, and wallets! 

Here's to all the wandering train ! 
Here's our ragged brats and callets ! 

One and all cry out Amen! 



wenches 



The materials for rebuilding Burns's world are 
not confined to his explicitly descriptive poems. 
Much can be gathered from the songs and satires, 
and there are important contributions in his too 
scanty essays in narrative. Of these last by far 
the most valuable is Tain o' Slianter. The poem 
originated accidentally in the request of a certain 
Captain Grose for local legends to enrich a de- 
scriptive work which he was compiling. In 
Burns's correspondence will be found a prose ac- 



254 BURNS 

count of the tradition on which the poem is 
founded, and he is supposed to have derived hints 
for the relations of Tarn and his spouse from a 
couple heknew at Kirkoswald. 

It was a happy inspiration that led him to turn 
the story into verse, for it revealed a capacity 
which otherwise we could hardly have guessed 
him to possess. The vigor and rapidity of the ac- 
tion, the vivid sketching of the background, the 
pregnant characterization, the drollery of the hu- 
mor give this piece a high place among stories in 
verse, and lead us to conjecture that, had he fol- 
lowed this vein instead of devoting his later 
years to the service of Johnson and Thomson, he 
might have won a place beside the author of the 
Canterbury Tales. He lacked, to be sure, Chau- 
cer's breadth of experience and richness of cul- 
ture : being far less a man of the world he would 
never have attained the air of breeding that dis- 
tinguishes the English poet : but with most of the 
essential qualities that charm us in Chaucer's sto- 
ries he was well equipped. He had the observant 
eye, the power of selection, command of the tell- 
ing phrase and happy epithet, the sense of the 
comic and the pathetic. Beyond Chaucer he had 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 255 

passion and the power of rendering it, so that he 
might have reached greater tragic depth, as he 
surpassed him in lyric intensity. 

As it is, however, Chaucer stands alone as a 
story-teller, for Tani o' Shanter is with Burns an 
isolated achievement. There are three distinct 
elements in the work — narrative, descriptive, and 
reflective. The first can hardly be overpraised. 
We are made to feel the reluctance of the hero to 
abandon the genial inn fireside, with its warmth 
and uncritical companionship, for the bitter ride 
with a sulky sullen dame at the end of it; the 
rage of the thunderstorm, as with lowered head 
and fast-held bonnet the horseman plunges 
through it; the growing sense of terror as, past 
scene after scene of ancient horror, he approaches 
the ill-famed ruin. Then suddenly the mood 
changes. Emboldened by his potations, Tarn 
faces the astounding infernal revelry with un- 
abashed curiosity, which rises and rises till, in a 
pitch of enthusiastic admiration for Cutty-Sark, 
he loses all discretion and brings the *'hellish le- 
gion" after him pell-mell. We reach the serio- 
comic catastrophe breathless but exhilarated. 

The descriptive background of this galloping 



256 BURNS 

adventure is skilfully indicated. Each scene — 
the ale-house, the storm, the lighted church, the 
witches' dance — is sketched in a dozen lines, 
every stroke distinct and telling. Even the three 
lines indicating what waits the hero at home is an 
adequate picture. Though incidental, these vign- 
ettes add substantially to what the descriptive 
poems have told us of the environment, real and 
imaginative, in which the poet had been reared. 

The value of the reflective element is more 
mixed. The most quoted passage, that beginning 

"But pleasures are like poppies spread," 

can only be regretted. With its literary similes, 
its English, its artificial diction, it is a patch of 
cheap silk upon honest homespun. But the other 
pieces of interspersed comment are all admirable. 
The ironic apostrophes — to Tam for neglecting 
his wife's warnings; to shrewish wives, consoling 
them for their husband's deafness to advice; to 
John Barleycorn, on the transient courage he in- 
spires ; to Tam again, when tragedy seems immi- 
nent — are all in perfect tone, and do much to add 
the element of drollery that mixes so delightfully 
with the weirdness of the scene. And like the 
other elements in the poem they are commend- 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 257 

ably short, for Burns nearly always fulfills Bage- 
liot's requirement that poetry should be "memo- 
rable and emphatic, intense, and soon over" 



TAM O' SHANTER 

A Tale 

Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this Buke. 
Garvin Douglas. 

When chapman billies leave the street. 
And drouthy neibors neibors meet, 
As market-da3'^s are wearing late, 
An' folk begin to tak the gate ; 
While we sit bousing at the nappy, 
An' getting fou and unco happy, 
We think na on the lang Scots miles, 
The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles, 
That lie between us and our hame. 
Where sits our sulky sullen dame, 
Gathering her brows like gathering storm. 
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. 



pedlar fellows 
thirsty 

road 

ale 

full, mighty 

bogs, gaps 



This truth fand honest Tam o' Shanter, 
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter — 
(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses 
For honest men and bonnie lasses). 



found 
one 



O Tam ! hadst thou but been sae wise 
As ta'en thy ain wife Kate's advice! 
She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum, 
A bletherin', blusterin', drunken blellum; 



told, good-for- 
nothing 

chattering, 
babbler 



258 



BURNS 



One 

every meal-grind- 
ing 
money 

nag 



wizards, dark 



makes, weep 



uncommonly 
fireside, blazing 
foaming ale 
Cobbler 

loved 



That frae November till October, 

Ae market-day thou was na sober; 

That ilka melder wi' the miller 

Thou sat as lang as thou had siller ; 

That every naig was ca'd a shoe on, 

The smith and thee gat roarin' fou on; 

That at the Lord's house, even on Sunday, 

Thou drank wi* Kirkton Jean till Monday. 

She prophesied that, late or soon, 

Thou would be found deep drown'd in Doon 

Or catch'd wi' warlocks in the mirk 

By Alloway's auld haunted kirk. 

Ah, gentle dames ! it gars me greet 
To think how mony counsels sweet, 
How mony lengthen'd sage advices. 
The husband frae the wife despises I 

But to our tale : Ae market night, 
Tarn had got planted unco right, 
Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely, 
Wi' reaming swats, that drank divinely; 
And at his elbow, Souter Johnny, 
His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony; 
Tam lo'ed him like a very brither ; 
They had been fou for weeks thegither. 
The night drave on wi' sangs and clatter. 
And aye the ale was growing better : 
The landlady and Tam grew gracious, 
Wi* favours secret, sweet, and precious; 
The souter tauld his queerest stories; 
The landlord's laugh was ready chorus : 
The storm without might rair and rustle, 
Tam did na mind the storm a whistle. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 259 

Care, mad to see a man sae happy, 
E'en drown'd himsel amang the nappy. 
As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure, loads 

The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleasure; 
Kings may be blest, but Tarn was glorious, 
O'er a' the ills o* life victorious ! 

But pleasures are like poppies spread — ■ 
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed ; 
Or like the snow falls in the river — 
A moment white, then melts for ever ; 
Or like the borealis race, 
That flit ere you can point their place ; 
Or like the rainbow's lovely form 
Evanishing amid the storm. 
Nae man can tether time nor tide; 
The hour approaches Tam maun ride ; 
That hour, o' night's black arch the key-stane, 
That dreary hour, he mounts his beast in ; 
And sic a night he taks the road in ; such 

As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in. 

The wind blew as *twad blawn its last; 
The rattling show'rs rose on the blast ; 
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd; 
Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow'd : 
That night, a child might understand, 
The Deil had business on his hand. 

Weel mounted on his gray mare, Meg, 
A better never lifted leg, 

Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire, spanked, puddle 

Despising wind, and rain, and fire; 



260 



BURNS 



Whiles holding fast his glide blue bonnet; 
Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet; 
Whiles glow'ring round wi' prudent cares, 
Lest bogles catch him unawares. 
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, 
Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry. 

By this time he was cross the ford, 
Where in the snaw the chapman smoor'd; 
And past the birks and meikle stane, 
Where drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; 
And thro' the whins, and by the cairn, 
Where hunters fand the murder'd bairn; 
And near the thorn, aboon the well, 
Where Mungo's mither hang'd hersel. 
Before him Doon pours all his floods; 
The doubling storm roars thro' the woods; 
The lightnings flash from pole to pole; 
Near and more near the thunders roll : 
When, glimmering thro' the groaning trees, 
Kirk-Alloway seem'd in a bleeze ; 
Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancing; 
And loud resounded mirth and dancing. 



Inspiring bold John Barleycorn ! 
What dangers thou canst make us scorn! 
Wi tippenny, we fear nae evil; 
Wi' usquebae, we'll face the devil ! 
The swats sae ream'd in Tammie's noddle, 
Fair play, he car'd na deils a boddle ! 
But Maggie stood right sair astonish'd. 
Till by the heel and hand admonish'd, 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 261 



She ventur'd forward on the light; 

And, vow! Tarn saw an unco sight! 

Warlocks and witches in a dance ! 

Nae cotillon brent new frae France, 

But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, 

Put life and mettle in their heels. 

A winnock-bunker in the east. 

There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast-.- 

A touzie tyke, black, grim, and large ! 

To gie them music was his charge : 

He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl. 

Till roof and rafters a' did dirl. 

Coffins stood round like open presses, 

That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses; 

And by some devilish cantraip sleight 

Each in its cauld hand held a light. 

By which heroic Tam was able 

To note upon the haly table 

A murderer's banes in gibbet-airns ; 

Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns; 

A thief new-cutted frae the rape — 

Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape ; 

Five tomahawks, wi' blude red rusted ; 

Five scymitars, wi' murder crusted ; 

A garter, which a babe had strangled ; 

A knife, a father's throat had mangled. 

Whom his ain son o' life bereft — 

The gray hairs yet stack to the heft ; 

Wi' mair of horrible and awfu'. 

Which even to name wad be unlawfu'. 



strange 
brand 

window-seat 

shaggy dog 

squeal 
ring 

magic trick 



holy 
-irons 



As Tammie glowr'd, amaz'd, and curious, 
The mirtli and fun grew fast and furious; 



262 



BURNS 



linked 

beldam, steamed 

cast, rags, work 

tripped deftly, 
chemise 

those, girls 

greasy flannel 

These trousers 

buttocks 
maidens 



Withered (?), 

wean 
Leaping, cudgel 



full well 
choice 



death 



barley 



short-shift, 
coarse linen 



proud 



The piper loud and louder blew; 

The dancers quick and quicker flew; 

They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit, 

Till ilka carlin swat and reekit, 

And coost her daddies to the wark, 

And linkit at it in her sark ! 

Now Tarn, O Tarn! had thae been queans, 
A' plump and strapping in their teens ; 
Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen, 
Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linen I^ 
Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair, 
That ance were plush, o' gude blue hair, 
I wad hae gi'en them off my hurdies, 
For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies ! 

But wither'd beldams, auld and droll, 
Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal, 
Louping and flinging on a crummock, 
I wonder didna turn thy stomach. 

But Tam kent what was what f u' brawlie : 
There was ae winsome wench and walie 
That night enlisted in the core, 
Lang after kent on Carrick shore ! 
(For mony a beast to dead she shot. 
And perish'd mony a bonnie boat. 
And shook baith meikle corn and bear, 
And kept the country-side in fear.) 
Her cutty sark, o' Paisley harn, 
That while a lassie she had worn, 
In longitude tho' sorely scanty, 
It was her best, and she was vauntie. 



1 Woven in a reed of 1,700 divisions. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 263 



Ah ! little kent thy reverend grannie 
That sark she coft for her wee Nannie 
Wi' twa pund Scots ('twas a' her riches) 
Wad ever grac'd a dance of witches ! 

But here my muse her wing maun cour ; 
Sic flights are far beyond her pow'r — 
To sing how Nannie lap and flang, 
(A souple jade she was, and Strang) ; 
And how Tarn stood, like ane bewitch'd, 
And thought his very een enrich'd ; 
Even Satan glowr'd, and fidg'd fu' fain, 
And hotch'd and blew wi' might and main: 
Till first ae caper, syne anither, 
Tam tint his reason a' thegither. 
And roars out 'Weel done, Cutty-sark I' 
And in an instant all was dark ! 
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied, 
When out the hellish legion sallied. 

As bees bizz out wi' angry fyke 
When plundering herds assail their byke, 
As open pussie's mortal foes 
When pop ! she starts before their nose, 
As eager runs the market-crowd, 
When 'Catch the thief !' resounds aloud ; 
So Maggie runs ; the witches follow, 
Wi' mony an eldritch skriech and hollo. 

Ah, Tam ! ah, Tam ! thou'll get thy f airin' I^ 
In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin' ! 
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin' ! 
Kate soon will be a woefu' woman ! 



bought 
pounds 



stoop 

leapt, kicked 



fidgeted with 

fondness 
jerked 

then 

lost 

Short-shift 



fret 

herd-boys, nest 
the hare's 



weird screech 



1 Lit., a present from a fair; deserts and something more. 



264 



BURNS 



Now do thy speedy utmost, Meg, 
And win the key-stane o' the brig : 
There at them thou thy tail may toss, 
A running stream they darena cross. 
But ere the key-stane she could make, 
The fient a tail she had to shake ! 
For Nannie, far before the rest, 
Hard upon noble Maggie prest, 
And flew at Tam wi' furious cttle; 
But little wist she Maggie's mettle ! 
Ae spring brought off her master hale. 
But left behind her ain gray tail : 
The carlin caught her by the rump, 
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump. 

Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read, 
Ilk man and mother's son, take heed; 
Whene'er to drink you are inclin'd, 
Or cutty-sarks rin in your mind, 
Think! ye may buy the joys o'er dear; 
Remember Tam o' Shanter's mare. 



Description in Burns is not confined to man 
and society; he has much to say of nature, ani- 
mate and inanimate. 

Though within a few miles of the ocean, the 
scenery among which the poet grew up was in- 
land scenery. He lived more than once by the sea 
for short periods, yet it appears but little in his 
verse, and then usually as the great severing ele- 
ment. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 265 

And seas between us braid hae roar'd 
Sin aiild lang syne 

is the characteristic line. Scottish poetry had 
no tradition of the sea. To England the sea had 
been the great boundary and defense against the 
continental powers, and her naval achievements 
had long produced a patriotic sentiment with re- 
gard to it which is reflected in her literature. But 
Scotland's frontier had been the line of the Che- 
viots and the Tweed, and save for a brief space 
under James IV she had never been a sea-power. 
Thus the cruelty and danger of the sea are almost 
the only phases prominent in her poetry, and 
Burns here once more follows tradition. 

Again, the scenery of Ayrshire was Lowland 
scenery, with pastoral hills and valleys. On his 
Highland tours Burns saw and admired moun- 
tains, but they too appear little in his verse. 
Though not an unimportant figure in the devel- 
opment of natural description in literature, he 
had not reached the modern deliberateness in the 
seeking out of nature's beauties for worship or 
imitation, so that the phases of natural beauty 
which we find in his poetry are merely those which 
had unconsciously become fixed in a memory nat- 
urally retentive of visual images. 



266 BURNS 

Not only do his natural descriptions deal with 
the aspects familiar to him in his ordinary sur- 
roundings, but they are for the most part treated 
in relation to life. The thunderstorm in Tarn o' 
Shanter is a characteristic example. It is de- 
tailed and vivid and is for the moment the center 
of interest; but it is introduced solely on Tam's 
account. Oftener the wilder moods of the 
weather are used as settings for lyric emotion. 
In Winter, a Dirge, the harmony of the poet's 
spirit with the tempest is the whole theme, and in 
My Nannie's Awa the same idea is treated with 
more mature art : 

Come autumn sae pensive, in yellow and gray, 
And soothe me wi' tidings o' nature's decay; 
The dark, dreary winter, and wild-driving snaw 
Alane can delight me — now Nannie's awa. 

Many poems are introduced with a note of the 
season, even when it has no marked relation to 
the tone of the poem. The Cotter's Saturday 
Night opens with 

November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh; 

The Jolly Beggars with 

When lyart leaves bestrew the yird; 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 267 

The Epistle to Davie with 

While winds frae off Ben-Lomond blaw. 
An' bar the doors wi' drivin' snaw, 

though in this last case it is skilfully used to in- 
troduce the theme. These introductions are prob- 
ably less imitations of the traditional opening 
landscape which had been a convention since the 
early Middle Ages, than the natural result of a 
plowman's daily consciousness of the weather. 

For whether related organically to his sub- 
ject or not, Burns's descriptions of external na- 
ture are to a high degree marked by actual ex- 
perience and observation. Even remembering 
Thomson in the previous generation and Cowper 
and Crabbe in his own, we may safely say that 
English poetry had hardly seen such realism. Its 
quality will be conceived from a few passages. 
Take the well-known description of the flood from 
The Brigs of Ayr. 

When heavy, dark, continued, a'-day rains, all-day 

Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains ; 

When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil, 

Or stately Lugar's mossy fountains boil. 

Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course, 

Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source, 

Arous'd by blust'ring winds an' spotting thowes, thaws 

In mony a torrent down the snaw-broo rowes; melted snow rolls 



268 BURNS 

floo^J While crashing ice, borne on the roaring spate, 

way (to the sea) Sweeps dams, an' mills, an' brigs, a' to the gate ; 

And from Glenbuck, down to the Ralton-key, 
Auld Ayr is just one lengthen'd, tumbling sea; 

*^^^*^'^ Then down ye'll hurl, deil nor ye never rise! 

muddy splashes And dash the gumlie jaup up to the pouring skies! 

Any reader familiar with Gavin Douglas's 
description of a Scottish winter in his Prologue 
to the twelfth book of the Mneid will be struck 
by the resemblance to this passage both in subject 
and manner. It is doubtful whether Burns knew 
more of Douglas than the motto to Tarn o' 
Shanter, but from the days of the turbulent 
bishop in the early sixteenth century down to 
Burns's own time Scottish poetry had never lost 
touch with nature, and had rendered it with pe- 
culiar faithfulness. It is interesting to note that 
while The Brigs of Ayr is Burns's most success- 
ful attempt at the heroic couplet, and though it 
contains verses that must have encouraged his 
ambition to be a Scottish Pope, yet it is sprinkled 
with touches of natural observation quite remote 
from the manner of that master. Compare, on 
the one hand, such couplets as these: 

Will your poor narrow foot-path of a street, 
Where twa wheel-barrows tremble when they meet, — 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 269 



and 



and 



and 



And tho* wi* crazy eild I'm sair forfairn 
I'll be a brig when ye're a shapeless cairn! 

Forms like some bedlam statuary's dream, 
The craz'd creations of misguided whim ; 

As for your priesthood, I shall say but little, 
Corbies and clergy are a shot right kittle; 



couplets of which Pope need hardly have been 
ashamed, with such touches of nature as these: 



Except perhaps the robin's whistling glee, 
Proud o' the height o' some bit half-lang tree : 

The silent moon shone high o'er tow'r and tree: 
The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam, 
Crept, gently crusting, owre the glittering stream. 



old age, sorely 

worn-out 
heap of stones 



Ravens, sort, 
ticklish 



and 



These examples of his power of exact, vigor- 
ous, or delicate rendering of familiar sights and 
sounds may be supplemented with a few from 
other poems. 

O sweet are Coila's haughs an' woods. 
When lintwhites chant amang the buds, 
And jinkin' hares, in amorous whids, 

Their loves enjoy, 
While thro' the braes the cushat croods 

Wi' wailfu' cry! 



intervales 

linnets 

dodging, gambols 



270 BURNS 

Ev'n winter bleak has charms to me 
When winds rave thro' the naked tree ; 
Or frost on hills of Ochiltree 

Are hoary gray ; 
Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee, 

Dark'ning the day! 

Epistle to William Simpson. 

Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, 

As thro' the glen it wimpled ; 
Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays ; 

Whyles in a wiel it dimpled ; 
Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays, 

Wi' bickering, dancing dazzle; 
Whyles cookit underneath the braes, 

Below the spreading hazel, 
Unseen that night. 

Halloween. 

Closely interwoven with Burns's feelings for 
natural beauty is his sympathy with animals. 
The frequency of passages of pathos on the suf- 
ferings of beasts and birds may be in part due 
to the influence of Sterne, but in the main its or- 
igin is not literary but is an expression of a ten- 
der heart and a lifelong friendly intercourse. In 
this relation Burns most often allows his senti- 
ment to come to the edge of sentimentality, yet 
in fairness it must be said that he seldom crosses 
the line. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 271 

had no need to force the note; it was his instinct 
both as a farmer and as a lover of animals to 
think, when he heard the storm rise, how it would 
affect the lower creation. 



List'ning the doors and winnocks rattle, 
I thought me on the ourie cattle, 
Or silly sheep, v/ha bide this brattle 

O' winter war, 
And thro' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle 

Beneath a scar. 



windows 
shivering 
onset 

-sinking, scramble 



Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing! Each hopping 

That, in the merry months o' spring, 
Delighted me to hear thee sing. 

What comes o' thee? 
Where wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing. 

An' close thy e'e? ^y® 

A Winter Night. 



A number of his most popular pieces are the 
expression of this warm-hearted sympathy, a 
sympathy not confined to suffering but extending 
to enjoyment of life and sunshine, and at times 
leading him to the half -humorous, half -tender 
ascription to horses and sheep of a quasi-human 
intelligence. Were we to indulge further our 
conjectures as to what Burns might have done 
under more favorable circumstances, it would be 



272 



BURNS 



easy to argue that he could have ranked with 
Henry son and La Fontaine as a writer of fables. 



TO A MOUSE, ON TURNING HER UP IN HER 

NEST WITH THE PLOUGH, 

NOVEMBER, 1785 



sleek 



hurrying rush 

loath 

plough-staff 



Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie, 

what a panic's in thy breastie ! 
Thou need na start awa sae hasty, 

Wi' bickering brattle! 

1 wad na be laith to rin an' chase thee 

Wi' murd'ring pattle! 



I'm truly sorry man's dominion 
Has broken Nature's social union, 
An' justifies that ill opinion 

Which makes thee startle 
At me, thy poor earth-born companion, 

An' fellow-mortal ! 



odd ear, 24 

sheaves 
Is 

rest 



I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve; 
What then ? poor beastie, thou maun live I 
A daimen icker in a thrave 

'S a sma' request: 
I'll get a blessin' wi' the lave. 

And never miss*t! 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE XJZ 



Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin ! 
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin* ! 
An* naething, now, to big a new ane, 

O' foggage green! 
An' bleak December's winds ensuin', 

Baith snell an' keen I 



frail 



bitter 



Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste, 
An' weary winter comin' fast, 
An' cozie here, beneath the blast, 

Thou thought to dwell, 
Till crash! the cruel coulter past 

Out thro' thy cell. 



That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble 
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble ! 
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble, 

But house or hald, 
To thole the winter's sleety dribble, 

An' cranreuch cauld! 



stubble 



Without, holding 

endure 

hoar-frost 



But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane. 
In proving foresight may be vain : 
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men 

Gang aft a-gley. 
An* lea'e us nought but grief an' pain 

For promis'd joy. 



alone 



Go oft askew 
leave 



274 



BURNS 



Still thou art blest compar'd wi' me! 
The present only toucheth thee: 
But och! I backward cast my e'e 

On prospects drear! 
An* forward tho' I canna see, 

I guess an' fear! 



TO A LOUSE 
On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church 



where are, going, 
wonder 



swagger 



such 



Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlin* ferlie! 
Your impudence protects you sairly : 
I canna say but ye strunt rarely, 

Owre gauze and lace; 
Tho* faith! I fear ye dine but sparely 

On sic a place. 



wonder 

saint 

foot 

Go 



Ye ugly, creepin', blastit wonner. 
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner! 
How dare ye set your fit upon her, 

Sae fine a lady! 
Gae somewhere else, and seek your dinner 

On some poor body. 



Quick, temples 
settle 



i. e. comb 



Swith! in some beggar's haffet squattle; 
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle 
Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle. 

In shoals and nations; 
Whare horn nor bane ne'er dare unsettle 

Your thick plantations. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 275 



Now haud ye there! ye're out o' sight, 
Below the f att'rils, snug an' tight ; 
Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right 

Till ye've got on it, 
The very tapmost tow'ring height 

O* Miss's bonnet. 

My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out, 
As plump and gray as onie grozet; 

for some rank mercurial rozet, 

Or fell red smeddum! 
I'd gie you sic a hearty doze o't, 

Wad dress your droddum! 

1 wad na been surpris'd to spy 
You on an auld wife's flannen toy; 
Or aiblins some bit duddie boy, 

On's wyliecoat; 
But Miss's fine Lunardi! fie, 

How daur ye do't? 

O Jenny, dinna toss your head, 
An' set your beauties a' abread! 
Ye little ken what cursed speed 

The blastie's makin'I 
Thae winks and finger-ends, I dread. 

Are notice takin'! 

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us 
To see oursels as others see us! 
It wad frae mony a blunder free us, 

And foolish notion: 
What airs in dress an* gait wad lea'e us. 

And ev'n devotion! 



keep 
fal-de-rals 



gooseberry 
rosin 
deadly, dust 

breech 



flannel cap 
perhaps, ragged 
undervest 
balloon bonnet 
dare 



abroad 

little wretch 
Those 



276 



BURNS 



TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY 

On Turning One Down With a Plough, 
IN April, 1786 

Wee modest crimson-tipped flow'r, 
Thou*s met me in an evil hour; 
For I maun crush amang the stoure 

Thy slender stem : 
To spare thee now is past my pow'r, 

Thou bonnie gem. 

Alas! it's no thy neibor sweet, 
The bonnie lark, companion meet, 
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet 

Wi' spreckl'd breast. 
When upward springing, blythe to greet 

The purpling east. 

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north 
Upon thy early humble birth ; 
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth 

Amid the storm. 
Scarce rear'd above the parent-earth 

Thy tender form. 



walls 
shelter 



barren 



The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield 
High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield, 
But thou, beneath the random bield 

O' clod or stane, 
Adorns the histie stibble-field. 

Unseen, alane. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 277 

There, in thy scanty mantle clad, 
Thy snawy bosom sun-ward spread, 
Thou lifts thy unassuming head 

In humble guise; 
But now the share uptears thy bed, 

And low thou lies ! 

Such is the fate of artless maid, 
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade, 
By love's simplicity betray'd, 

And guileless trust, 
Till she like thee, all soil'd, is laid 

Low i' the dust. 

Such is the fate of simple bard, 

On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd: 

Unskilful he to note the card 

Of prudent lore. 
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, 

And whelm him o'er 1 

Such fate to suffering worth is giv'n, 
Who long with wants and woes has striv'n, 
By human pride or cunning driv'n 

To mis'ry's brink, 
Till wrench'd of ev'ry stay but Heav'n, 

He, ruin'd, sink! 

Ev*n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, 
That fate is thine — no distant date; 
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate 

Full on thy bloom. 
Till crush'd beneath the furrow's weight 

Shall be thy dooml 



27^ 



BURNS 



welcome with a 
present 



handful, belly 

hollow-backed, 
knobby 



colt 
Across, lea 

drooping 

glossy 

excite 
Once 



stately, compact, 
limber 



earth 
pool 



as dowry 

wealth 
strong 



THE AULD FARMER'S NEW-YEAR MORNING 

SALUTATION TO HIS AULD MARE, 

MAGGIE, 

On Giving Her the Accustomed Ripp of Corn to 
Hansel in the New Year 

A guid New-Year I wish thee, Maggie! 
Hae, there's a ripp to thy auld baggie : 
Tho' thou's howe-backit now, an' knaggie, 

I've seen the day, 
Thou could hae gane Hke ony staggie 

Out-owre the lay. 

Tho' now thou's dowie, stiff, an' crazy, 
An' thy auld hide's as white's a daisie, 
I've seen thee dappled, sleek, an' glaizie, 

A bonnie gray: 
He should been tight that daur't to raize thee, 

Ance in a day. 

Thou ance was i' the foremost rank, 
A filly buirdly, steeve, an' swank, 
An' set weel down a shapely shank. 

As e'er tread yird ; 
An' could hae flown out-owre a stank. 

Like ony bird. 

It's now some nine-an-twenty year. 
Sin* thou was my guid-father's meere; 
He gied me thee, o' tocher clear, 

An' fifty mark; 
Tho' it was sma', 'twas weel-won gear, 

An' thou was stark. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 279 



When first I gaed to woo my Jenny, 
Ye then was trottin' wi' your minnie: 
Tho' ye was trickie, slee, an' funnie, 

Ye ne'er was donsie; 
But hamely, tawie, quiet, an' cannie, 

An* unco sonsie. 

That day ye pranc'd wi' muckle pride 
When ye bure hame my bonnie bride; 
An' sweet an' grace fu' she did ride, 

Wi' maiden air ! 
Kyle-Stewart I could bragged wide 

For sic a pair. 

Tho* now ye dow but hoyte and hobble, 
An' wintle like a saumont-coble. 
That day ye was a j inker noble 

For heels an' win*! 
An' ran them till they a' did wobble 

Far, far behin'. 

When thou an' I were young and skeigh, 

An' stable-meals at fairs were driegh, 

How thou wad prance, an' snore, an' skriegh 

An' tak the road! 
Town's-bodies ran, and stood abeigh. 

An' ca't thee mad. 



mother 

sly 

unmanageable 

tractable, good 

tempered 
very attractive 

much 
bore 



have challenged 



can only halt 

stagger, salmon- 
boat 
goer 

wind 



skittish 

dull 

snort, neigh 

aloof 



When thou was corn't, an' I was mellow, 
We took the road aye like a swallow : 
At brooses thou had ne'er a fellow 

For pith an' speed; 
But ev'ry tail thou pay't them hollow, 

Where'er thou gaed. 



full of corn 
wedding-races 

went 



280 



BURNS 



short-rumped 

perhaps have beat, 
spurt 



wheeze 



willow 



The sma', droop-rumpled, hunter cattle, 
Might aiblins waur'd thee for a brattle; 
But sax Scotch miles, thou tried their mettle, 

An' gart them whaizle : 
Nae whip nor spur, but just a wattle 

O' saugh or hazel. 



near horse of 

hindmost pair 
hide or tow traces 

eight, going 



plunged, stopped, 
capered 



chest 



rooty hillocks, 

roared, cracked 
fallen gently over 



Thou was a noble fittie-lan', 

As e'er in tug or tow was drawn! 

Aft thee an' I, in aucht hours gaun, 

On guid March-weather, 
Hae turn'd sax rood beside our ban*, 

For days thegither. 

Thou never braindg't, an' fetch't, an' fliskit, 
But thy auld tail thou wad hae whiskit, 
An* spread abreed thy weel-fill'd brisket, 

Wi' pith an* pow'r, 
Till spritty knowes wad rair't and riskit, 

An' slypet owre. 



dish 
edges 



When frosts lay lang, an' snaws were deep, 
An* threaten'd labour back to keep, 
I gied thy cog a wee bit heap 

Aboon the timmer; 
I kenn'd my Maggie wad na sleep 

For that, or simmer. 



were restive 
steepest 
leapt, jumped 



jogged along 



In cart or car thou never reestit ; 

The steyest brae thou wad hae faced it; 

Thou never lap, an' stenned, an' breastit, 

Then stood to blaw; 
But, just thy step a wee thing hastit, 

Thou snoov't awa. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 281 



My pleugh is now thy bairn-tlme a', 
Four gallant brutes as e'er did draw; 
Forbye sax mae I've sell't awa 

That thou hast nurst: 
They drew me thretteen pund an' twa, 

The very warst. 



plough-team, issue 



Besides, more, 
away 



worst 



Mony a sair darg we twa hae wrought, 
An' wi' the weary warl' fought! 
An' mony an anxious day I thought 

We wad be beat ! 
Yet here to crazy age we're brought, 

Wi' something yet. 



day's work 



And think na, my auld trusty servan'. 
That now perhaps thou's less deservin*. 
An' thy auld days may end in starvin'; 

For my last fou, 
A heapit stimpart I'll reserve ane 

Laid by for you. 



bushel 
quarter-peck 



We've worn to crazy years thegither; 
We'll toyte about wi' ane anither; 
Wi' tentie care I'll flit thy tether 

To some hain'd rig, 
Where ye may nobly rax your leather, 

Wi' sma' fatigue. 

To the evidence of Burns's warm-heartedness 
supplied by these kindly verses may appropriately 
be added the Address to the Deil, Burns's atti- 



totter 

attentive, change 
reserved plot 
stretch, sides 



282 BURNS 

tude to the supernatural we have already slightly 
touched on. Apart from the somewhat vague 
Deism which seems to have formed his personal 
creed, the poet's attitude toward most of the be- 
liefs in the other world which were held around 
him was one of amused skepticism. Halloween 
and Tarn o' Shanter show how he regarded the 
grosser rural superstitions; but the Devil was 
another matter. Scottish Calvinism had, as has 
been said, made him almost the fourth person in 
the Godhead; and Burns's thrusts at this belief 
are among the most effective things in his satire. 
In the present piece, however, the satirical spirit 
is almost overcome by kindliness and benevolent 
humor, and few of his poems are more character- 
istic of this side of his nature. 



ADDRESS TO THE DEIL 

O thou ! whatever title suit thee, 
Hoofie Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie, 

Wha in yon cavern grim an' sootie, 
Clos'd under hatches. 
Splashes, dish Spairges about the brunstane cootie, 

scald To scaud poor wretches! 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 283 



Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee, 
An* let poor damned bodies be; 
I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie, 

Ev'n to a deil, 
To skelp an' scaud poor dogs like me, 

An' hear us squeal ! 

Great is thy pow'r, an' great thy fame ; 
Far kenn'd an' noted is thy name ; 
An', tho' yon lowin' heugh's thy hame. 

Thou travels far; 
An' faith! thou's neither lag nor lame, 

Nor blate nor scaur. 

Whyles rangin' like a roarin' lion 
For prey, a' holes an' corners tryin' ; 
Whyles on the strong-wing'd tempest flyin' 

Tirlin' the kirks ; 
Whyles, in the human bosom pryin*, 

Unseen thou lurks. 

I've heard my reverend grannie say, 
In lanely glen,s ye like to stray; 
Or, where auld ruin'd castles gray 

Nod to the moon, 
Ye fright the nightly wand'rer's way, 

Wi' eldritch croon. 

When twilight did my grannie summon 
To say her pray'rs, douce, honest woman ! 
Aft yont the dyke she's heard you bummin' 

Wi' eerie drone ; 
Or, rustlin', thro' the boortrees comin', 

Wi' heavy groan. 



Hangman 



spank, scald 



flaming pit 

backward 
shy, afraid 



Stripping 



weird 



sedate 
beyond 
uncanny 
elders 



284 



BURNS 



squinting 

pond 

clump of rushes 

moan 



Ae dreary windy winter night 

The stars shot down wi' sklentin' light, 

Wi' you mysel I gat a fright 

Ayont the lough; 
Ye like a rash-buss stood in sight 

Wi' waving sough. 



fist 



weird, harsh 



The cudgel in my nieve did shake, 
Each bristled hair stood like a stake, 
When wi' an eldritch stoor *quaick, quaick,* 

Amang the springs, 
Awa ye squatter'd like a drake 

On whistlin' wings. 



ragwort 



disburied 



Let warlocks grim an' wither'd hags 
Tell how wi* you on ragweed nags 
They skim the muirs an' dizzy crags 

Wi' wicked speed; 
And in kirk-yards renew their leagues 

Owre howkit dead. 



churn 

i. e., the butter 



petted, twelve- 
pint cow 
dry, bull 



husbands, cock- 
sure 
tool 



magic 



Thence country wives, wi' toil an' pain, 
May plunge an' plunge the kirn in vain ; 
For oh ! the yellow treasure's taen 

By witchin' skill; 
An* dawtit, twal-pint Hawkie's gane 

As yell's the bill. 

Thence mystic knots mak great abuse 

On young guidmen, fond, keen, an' crouse; 

When the best wark-lume i' the house, 

By cantrip wit, 
Is instant made no worth a louse, 

Just at the bit. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 285 



When thowes dissolve the snawy hoord, 
An' float the jinglin' icy boord, 
Then water-kelpies haunt the foord, 

By your direction, 
An' 'nighted trav'IIers are allur'd 

To their destruction. 

An' aft your moss-traversing spunkies 
Decoy the wight that late an' drunk is : 
The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkies 

Delude his eyes, 
Till in some miry slough he sunk is, 

Ne'er mair to rise. 

When masons' mystic word an' grip 
In storms an' tempests raise you up, 
Some cock or cat your rage maun stop, 

Or, strange to tell! 
The youngest brither ye wad whip 

Aff straught to hell. 

Lang syne, in Eden's bonnie yard. 
When youthfu' lovers first were pair'd, 
And all the soul of love they shar'd, 

The raptur'd hour. 
Sweet on the fragrant flow'ry swaird, 
In shady bow'r; 

Then you, ye auld snick-drawing dog! 

Ye cam to Paradise incog. 

An' play'd on man a cursed brogue, 

(Black be your fa!) 
An' gied the infant war Id a shog, 

'Maist ruin'd a'. 



thaws, hoard 



-spirits 



bog-, goblins 



must 

straight 
ago, garden 

sward 

scheming 
trick 



shake 



286 



BURNS 



flurry 

smoky rags, 

scorched wig 
smutty 



squinted 



holding 



loosed, scold 
of all 



fighting 

beat, Lowland 

Hoofs 

roistering 

hurrying 

dodging 



mend 
perhaps 



D'ye mind that day, when in a bizz, 
Wi' reekit duds, an' reestit gizz, 
Ye did present your smoutie phiz 

'Mang better folk, 
An' sklented on the man of Uz 

Your spitefu' joke? 

An* how ye gat him i' your thrall, 
An' brak him out o' house an' hal', 
While scabs an' blotches did him gall 

Wi' bitter claw, 
An* lows'd his ill-tongu'd wicked scaul, 

Was warst ava? 

But a' your doings to rehearse, 
Your wily snares an* fetchin' fierce, 
Sin' that day Michael did you pierce, 

Down to this time, 
Wad ding a* Lallan tongue, or Erse, 

In prose or rhyme. 

An* now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin*, 
A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin', 
Some luckless hour will send him linkin*, 

To your black pit; 
But faith! he'll turn a corner jinkin*, 

An' cheat you yet. 

But fare you weel, auld Nickie-benl 
O wad ye tak a thought an* men*l 
Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — 

Still hae a stake: 
Tm wae to think upo' yon den, 

Ev'n for your sake! 



DESCRIPTIVE—NARRATIVE 287 

Somewhat akin in nature is Death and Doctor 
Hornbook. The purpose is personal satire, Doc- 
tor Hornbook being a real person, John Wilson, 
a schoolmaster in Tarbolton, who had turned 
quack and apothecary. The figure of Death is 
an amazingly graphic creation, with its mixture 
of weirdness and familiar humor; while the at- 
tack on Hornbook is managed with consummate 
skill. Death is made to complain that the doctor 
is balking him of his legitimate prey, and the 
drift seems to be complimentary; when in the 
last few verses it appears that in compensation 
Hornbook kills far more than he cures. 

DEATH AND DOCTOR HORNBOOK 

Some books are lies frae end to end, 

And some great lies were never penn'd : 

Ev'n ministers, they hae been kenn'd, known 

In holy rapture, 
A rousing whid at times to vend, fi^ 

And nail't wi' Scripture. 

But this that I am gaun to tell, going 

Which lately on a night befell, 
Is just as true's the Deil's in hell 

Or Dublin city: 
That e'er he nearer comes oursel 

'S a muckle pity. iB^eat 



288 



BURNS 



village ale, cheer- 
ful 
full 

staggered, heed 

clear 



The clachan yill had made me canty, 

I wasna fou, but just had plenty; 

I stacher'd whyles, but yet took tent aye 

To free the ditches; 
An' hillocks, stanes, an' bushes kent aye 

Frae ghaists an' witches. 



stare 
above 



The rising moon began to glowre 
The distant Cumnock hills out-owre; 
To count her horns, wi' a' my pow'r, 

I set mysel; 
But whether she had three or four 

I cou'd na tell. 



I was come round about the hill, 
And todlin' down on Willie's mill. 
Setting my staff, wi' a' my skill, 

To keep me sicker; 
Tho' leeward whyles, against my will, 

I took a bicker. 



meet 

put, ghostly dread 

across one shoul- 
der 
hung 

-toed fish-spear 



I there wi' Something does forgather, 

That pat me in an eerie swither ; 

An awfu' scythe, out-owre ae shouther, 

Clear-danghng, hang; 
A three-tae'd leister on the ither 

Lay large an' lang. 



devil a belly, at all 



sides of an ox's 
bridle 



Its stature seem'd lang Scotch ells twa, 
The queerest shape that e'er I saw, 
For fient a wame it had ava; 

And then Its shanks. 
They were as thin, as sharp an' sma' 

As cheeks o* branks. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 289 



*Guid-een,' quo' I ; 'Friend ! hac yc been mawin, 
When ither folk are busy sawin?' 
It seem'd to mak a kind o' stan', 

But naething spak ; 
At length says I, 'Friend, wh'are ye gaun? 

Will ye go back?' 

It spak right howe : *My name is Death, 
But be na fley'd.'— Quoth I, 'Guid faith, 
Ye're maybe come to stap my breath ; 

But tent me, billie : 
I red ye weel, tak care o' skaith, 

See, there's a gully!' 

'Gudeman,' quo' he, 'put up your whittle, 
I'm no design'd to try its mettle; 
But if I did— I wad be kittle 

To be mislear'd — 
I wad na mind it, no that spittle 

Out-owre my beard.* 

*Weel, weel !' says I, 'a bargain be't ; 
Come, gies your hand, an' sae we're gree't; 
We'll ease our shanks an' tak a seat — 

Come, gies your news; 
This while ye hae been mony a gate, 

At mony a house.' 

*Ay, ay!' quo' he, an' shook his head, 
Tt's e'en a lang, lang time indeed 
Sin' I began to nick the thread. 

An' choke the breath : 
Folk maun do something for their bread, 

An' sae maun Death. 



Good-evening, 

mowing 
sowing 



going 

hollow 
frightened 

heed, fellow 

advise, harm 
big knife 

knife 

ticklish 

if mischievous 

Over 

give us, agreed 

road 



must 



290 



BURNS 



well-nigh 
butchering 

stop, scare 

worst 



village 

second stomach, 
tobacco pouch 

(Author of Do- 
mestic Medicine) 



children 
poke 



Devil a thing 
last night 

rang, bone 



Devil a bit 
cabbage-stalk 



'Sax thousand years are near-hand fled, 

Sin' I was to the hutching bred ; 

An' mony a scheme in vain's been laid 

To stap or scaur me; 
Till ane Hornbook's ta'en up the trade, 

An' faith ! he'll waur me. 

*Ye ken Jock Hornbook i' the clachan — 
Deil mak his king's-hood in a spleuchan ! 
He's grown sae well acquaint wi' Buchan 

An* ither chaps, 
The weans haud out their fingers laughin' 

And pouk my hips. 

*See, here's a scythe, and there's a dart— 
They hae pierc'd mony a gallant heart; 
But Doctor Hornbook, wi' his art 

And cursed skill, 
Has made them baith no worth a fart! 

Damn'd haet they'll kill. 

*'Twas but yestreen, nae farther gane, 

I threw a noble throw at ane — 

Wi* less, I'm sure, I've hundreds slain — '. 

But deil-ma-care 1 
It just play'd dirl on the bane, 

But did nae mair. 

'Hornbook was by wi* ready art, 
And had sae fortified the part 
That, when I looked to my dart, 

It was sae blunt, 
Fient haet o't wad hae pierc'd the heart 

O* a kail-runt. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 291 



*I drew my scythe in sic a fury 
I near-hand cowpit wi' my hurry, 
But yet the bauld Apothecary 

Withstood the shock; 
I might as weel hae tried a quarry 

O' hard whin rock. 

*E'en them he canna get attended, 
Altho' their face he ne'er had kenn'd it, 
Just sh — in a kail-blade, and send it, 

As soon's he smells't, 
Baith their disease, and what will mend it, 

At once he tells't. 

'And then a' doctor's saws and whittles, 
Of a' dimensions, shapes, an' mettles, 
A* kinds o' boxes, mugs, an' bottles. 

He's sure to hae ; 
Their Latin names as fast he rattles 

As A B C. 

'Calces o' fossils, earths, and trees; 
True sal-niarinum o' the seas; 
The farina of beans and pease, 

He has't in plenty; 
Aqua-fortis, what you please. 

He can content ye. 

'Forbye some new uncommon weapons, — 

Urinus spiritus of capons ; 

Or mite-horn shavings, filings, scrapings, 

Distill'd per se ; 
Sal-alkali o' midge-tail clippings, 

And mony mae.' 



upset 



cabbage-leaf 



Besides 



292 



BURNS 



the grave-digger's 

those 

grazing-plot, 
daisies 

split 



groaned, weird 



ditch 



straw (t. e., bed) 



oath 



cloth 



weaver by 

fists 

aching 
slid quietly 



botts 
commotion 



pet-ewes 



'Wae's me for Johnny Ged's Hole now/ 
Quoth I, 'if that thae news be true! 
His braw calf-ward whare gowans grew 

Sae white and bonnie, 
Nae doubt they'll rive it wi' the plew ; 

They'll ruin Johnie!* 

The creature grain'd an eldritch laugh, 
And says : 'Ye needna yoke the pleugh, 
Kirk-yards will soon be till'd eneugh, 

Tak ye nae fear; 
They'll a' be trench'd wi' mony a sheugh 

In twa-three year. 

'Where I kill'd ane, a fair strae-death, 
By loss o' blood or want o' breath, 
This night I'm free to tak my aith 

That Hornbook's skill 
Has clad a score i' their last claith. 

By drap and pill. 

*An honest wabster to his trade, 

Whase wife's twa nieves were scarce weel-bred, 

Gat tippence-worth to mend her head 

When it was sair ; 
The wife slade cannie to her bed, 

But ne'er spak mair. 

'A country laird had ta'en the batts. 
Or some curmurring in his guts, 
His only son for Hornbook sets, 

An' pays him well: 
The lad, for twa guid gimmer-pets, 

Was laird himsel. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 293 



*A bonnie lass, ye kenn'd her name, 

Some ill-brewn drink had hov'd her wame; 

She trusts hersel, to hide the shame, 

In Hornbook's care; 
Horn sent her aff to her lang hame, 

To hide it there. 



raised, belly 



'That's just a swatch o' Hornbook's way; 
Thus goes he on from day to day, 
Thus does he poison, kill an' slay, 

An's weel pay'd for't; 
,Yet stops me o' my lawfu' prey 

Wi' his damn'd dirt. 



sample 



*But, hark! Fll tell you of a plot, 
Tho' dinna ye be speaking o't; 
I'll nail the self-conceited sot 

As dead's a herrin': 
Niesi time we meet, I'll wad a groat, 

He gets his fairin'l* 



Next, wager 



But, Just as he began to tell, 

The auld kirk-hammer strak the bell 

Some wee short hour ayont the twal, 

Which rais'd us baith 
I took the way that pleas'd mysel, 

And sac did Death. 



struck 

beyond, twelve 
got us to our feet 



A few miscellaneous poems remain to be 
quoted. These do not naturally fall into any of 
the major classes of Burns's work, yet are too 



294 BURNS 

important either for their intrinsic worth or the 
light they throw on his character and genius to 
be omitted. The Elegies, of which he wrote 
many, following, as has been seen, the tradition 
founded by Sempill of Beltrees, may be exempli- 
fied by Tarn Samson's Elegy and that on Captain 
Matthew Henderson. Special phases of Scottish 
patriotism are expressed in Scotch Drink, and the 
address To a Haggis; while more personal is A 
Bard's Epitaph. In this last we have Burns's 
summing up of his own character, and it closes 
with his recommendation of the virtue he strove 
after but could never attain. 

TAM SAMSON'S ELEGY 

Has auld Kilmarnock seen the deil? 
twisted Or great Mackinlay thrawn his heel? 

Or Robertson again grown weel, 

To preach an' read? 
worse, everybody *Na, waur than a' !' cries ilka chiel, 

*Tam Samson's deadl* 

Kilmarnock lang may grunt an' grane, 
An' sigh, an' sab, an* greet her lane, 
An' deed her bairns, man, wife, an' wean. 

In mourning weed; 
To death, she's dearly paid the kane, — 

Tarn Samson's dead! 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 295 



The Brethren o' the mystic level 
May hing their head in woefu' bevel, 
While by their nose the tears will revel, 

Like ony bead; 
Death's gien the Lodge an unco devel, — 

Tam Samson's dead! 



slope 



stunning blow 



When Winter muffles up his cloak, 
And binds the mire like a rock; 
When to the loughs the curler's flock 

Wi' gleesome speed, 
Wha will they station at the cock? 

Tam Samson's dead! 



ponds 
mark 



He was the king o' a' the core 
To guard, or draw, or wick a borc.i 
Or up the rink like Jehu roar 

In time o' need; 
But now he lags on Death's hogscore,2- 

Tam Samson's dead! 



Now safe the stately sawmont sail, 
And trouts bedropp'd wi' crimson hail, 
And eels weel kent for souple tail, 

And geds for greed. 
Since dark in Death's fish-creel we wail 

Tam Samson dead! 



salmon 



pikes 



1 In curling, to g^iard is to protect one stone by another in front; 
to draw is to drive a stone into a good position by striking it with 
another; to zvick a bore is to hit a stone obliquely and send it through 
between two others. 

2 The line a curling stone must cross to stay in the game. 



296 



BURNS 



whirring part- 
ridges 

leg-plumed, con- 
fidently 

hares, tail 



Rejoice, j-e birring paitricks a'; 

Ye cootie moorcocks, crousely craw; 

Ye maukins, cock your fud fu' braw, 

Withouten dread; 
Your mortal fae is now awa*, — 

Tam Samson's dead! 



That woefu* morn be ever mourn'd 
Saw him in shootin graith adorn'd, 
While pointers round impatient burn*d, 

Frae couples freed ; 
But oh! he gaed and ne'er return'd! 

Tam Samson's deadl 



brooks, lakes 

broad 

weeping 



In vain auld age his body batters; 

In vain the gout his ancles fetters; 

In vain the burns cam down like waters, 

An acre braid! 
Now ev'ry auld wife, greetin', clatters 

*Tam Samson's dead!* 



feud 
blast 



Owre mony a weary hag he limpit, 
An' aye the tither shot he thumpit. 
Till coward Death behin' him jumpit 

Wi' deadly feide; 
Now he proclaims, wi' tout o' trumpet, 

*Tam Samson's dead!* 



When at his heart he felt the dagger. 
He reel'd his wonted bottle-swagger, 
But yet he drew the mortal trigger 

Wi' weel-aim'd heed; 
'Lord, five!' he cried, an' owre did stagger; 

Tam Samson's dead! 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 297 



Ilk hoary hunter mourn'd a brither ; 
Ilk sportsman youth bemoan'd a father; 
Yon auld grey stane, amang the heather, 

Marks out his head, 
Where Burns has wrote, in rhyming blether, 

'Tam Samson's dead!' 



nonsense 



There low he lies in lasting rest; 
Perhaps upon his mould'ring breast 
Some spitfu' muirfowl bigs her nest, 

To hatch and breed; 
Alas ! nae mair he'll them molest ! 

Tam Samson's dead! 



builds 



When August winds the heather wave, 
And sportsmen wander by yon grave. 
Three volleys let his memory crave 

O' pouther an' lead, 
Till Echo answer frae her cave 

*Tam Samson's dead 1' 



powder 



'Heav'n rest his saul, where'er he be!' 
Is th' wish o' mony mae than me : 
He had twa fauts, or maybe three, 

Yet what remead? 
Ae social honest man want we : 

Tam Samson's dead! 



remedy 
One 



THE EPITAPH 



Tam Samson's weel-worn clay here lies: 
Ye canting zealots, spare him! 

If honest worth in heaven rise, 
Ye'll mend ere ye win near him. 



298 



BURNS 



nooks 
fellow 



unharmed, nimble 
knife 



Per Contra 

Go, Fame, an' canter like a filly 
Thro' a' the streets an' neuks o' Killie, 
Tell ev'ry social honest billie 

To cease his grievin', 
For yet, unskaith'd by Death's gleg guUie, 

Tarn Samson's livin'l 



big, gallows-rope 
Drag, smithy 
hedgehog 
anvil 



:gone 
one 



stars 

mounds 

eagles 

children 



ELEGY ON CAPT. MATTHEW HENDERSON, 

A Gentleman Who Held the Patent for His Honours 
Immediately From Almighty God 

O Death! thou tyrant fell and bloody! 
The meikle devil wi' a woodie 
Haurl thee hame to his black smiddie 

O'er hurcheon hides, 
And like stock-fish come o'er his studdie 

Wi' thy auld sides! 

He's gane, he's gane! he's frae us torn, 
The ae best fellow e'er was born! 
Thee, Matthew, Nature's sel' shall mourn 

By wood and wild, 
Where, haply, Pity strays forlorn, 

Frae man exil'd. 

Ye hills, near neibors o' the starns, 
That proudly cock your cresting cairns! 
Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing earns, 

Where echo slumbers! 
Come join, ye Nature's sturdiest bairns, 

My wailing numbers! 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 299 



Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens I 
Ye haz'lly shaws and briery dens I 
Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens, 

Wi' toddlih din, 
Or foaming Strang wi' hasty stens 

Frae lin to lin. 



each, dove 

woods. 

winding 

heaps 
fall 



Mourn, little harebells o'er the lea; 
Ye stately foxgloves fair to see ; 
Ye woodbines hanging bonnilie, 

In scented bow'rs; 
Ye roses on your thorny tree, 

The first o' flow'rs. 



At dawn when ev'ry grassy blade 
Droops with a diamond at his head, 
At ev'n when beans their fragrance shed 

r th' rustling gale, 
Ye maukins, whiddin' thro' the glade, 

Come join my wail. 

Mourn, ye wee songsters o* the wood; 

Ye grouse that crap the heather bud; 

Ye curlews calling thro' a clud; 

Ye whistling plover; 

And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood- 
He's gane for ever! 

Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals; 
Ye iisher herons, watching eels; 
Ye duck and drake, wi' airy wheels 

Circling the lake; 
lYe bitterns, till the quagmire reels, 

Rair for his sake. 



hares, scudding 



crop 
cloud 



partridge 



Boom 



300 



BURNS 



Mourn, clamouring craiks at close o' day, 
'Mang fields o' flowering clover gay; 
And, when ye wing your annual way 

Frae our cauld shore, 
Tell thae far warlds wha lies in clay, 

Wham we deplore. 

Ye houlets, frae your ivy bow'r 
In some auld tree, or eldritch tow'r, 
What time the moon wi* silent glowr 

Sets up her horn, 
Wail thro' the dreary midnight hour 

Till waukrife morn! 

O rivers, forests, hills, and plains! 
Oft have ye heard my canty strains; 
But now, what else for me remains 

But tales of woe? 
And frae my een the drapping rains 

Maun ever flow. 

Mourn, Spring, thou darling of the year! 
Ilk cowsHp cup shall kep a tear: 
Thou, Simmer, while each corny spear 

Shoots up its head. 
Thy gay green flow'ry tresses shear 

For him that's dead! 

Thou, Autumn, wi' thy yellow hair, 
In grief thy sallow mantle tear ! 
Thou, Winter, hurling thro' the air 

The roaring blast. 
Wide o'er the naked warld declare 

The worth we've lost! 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 301 

Mourn him, thou sun, great source of Hght! 

Mourn, empress of the silent night ! 

And you, ye twinkhng starnies bright, starlets 

My Matthew mourn I 
For through your orbs he's ta'en his flight, 

Ne'er to return. 

O Henderson ! the man ! the brother ! 
And art thou gone, and gone for ever? 
And hast thou crost that unknown river, 

Life's dreary bound? 
Like thee, where shall I find another, 

The world around? 

Go to your sculptur'd tombs, ye great, 
In a' the tinsel trash o' state ! 
But by thy honest turf I'll wait. 

Thou man of worth! 
And weep the ae best fellow's fate 

E'er lay in earth. 



SCOTCH DRINK 

Gie him strong drink, until he wink. 

That's sinking in despair; 
An' liquor guid to fire his bluid. 

That's prest wi' grief an' care; 

There let him house, an' deep carouse, 

Wi' bumpers flowing o'er, 
Till he forgets his loves or debts. 

An' minds his griefs no more. 

Solomon (Proverbs xxxi. 6, 7). 



302 



BURNS 



ear 
barley 



Let other Poets raise a fracas 

*Bout vines, an' wines, an' drunken Bacchus, 

An' crabbed names an' stories wrack us, 

An' grate our lug; 
I sing the juice Scotch bear can mak us, 

In glass or jug. 



winding, dodge 

cream 

foam 



O thou, my Muse ! guid auld Scotch Drink, 
Whether thro' wimplin worms thou jink, 
Or, richly brown, ream owre the brink, 

In glorious faem. 
Inspire me, till I lisp an* wink. 

To sing thy name! 



flat river-lands 
oats, bearded 



Commend me to 



Let husky wheat the haughs adorn, 
An' aits set up their awnie horn. 
An* pease an* beans at een or morn, 

Perfume the plain; 
Leeze me on thee, John Barleycorn, 

Thou King o' grain ! 



chews, cud 

soft cakes, choice 



On thee aft Scotland chows her cood. 
In souple scones, the wale o' food ! 
Or tumblin' in the boiling flood 

Wi* kail an' beef; 
But when thou pours thy strong heart's blood, 

There thou shines chief. 



belly 



careering 



Food fills the wame, an' keeps us livin'; 
Tho* life's a gift no worth receivin'. 

But, oil'd by thee, 
The wheels o* life gae down-hill, scrievin' 

Wi* rattlin* glee. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 303 



Thou clears the head o' doited Lear : 
Thou cheers the heart o' drooping Care; 
Thou strings the nerves o' Labour sair, 

At's weary toil: 
Thou even brightens dark Despair 

Wi' gloomy smile. 

Aft, clad in massy siller weed, 
Wi' gentles thou erects thy head; 
Yet humbly kind, in time o* need. 

The poor man's wine, 
His wee drap parritch, or his bread, 

Thou kitchens fine. 

Thou art the life o' public haunts ; 

But thee, what were our fairs and rants? 

Ev'n godly meetings o' the saunts, 

By thee inspir'd, 
When gaping they besiege the tents, 

Are doubly fir'd. 

That merry night we get the corn in! 
O sweetly then thou reams the horn in! 
Or reekin' on a New-Year mornin* 

In cog or bicker. 
An' just a wee drap sp'ritual burn in, 

An' gusty sucker ! 

When Vulcan gies his bellows breath, 
An' ploughmen gather wi' their graith, 
O rare to see thee fizz an* freath 

r th* lugged caup! 
Then Burnewin comes on like death 

At ev'ry chaup. 



muddled Learning 



makest palatable 



Without, frolics 
saints 



foamest 
smoking 
bowl, cup 
whisky 
tasty sugar 

implements 
froth 

two-eared cup 
The Blacksmith 
blow 



304 



BURNS 



iron 

bony, fellow 



anvil 

squalling babies 

dolts 

Midwife 
small coin 

lawsuit 

mad 

-brew 



blame 
throat 



ask 



illness 



Robs, stupid, 
drunken os^i 



Nae mercy, then, for airn or steel; 
The brawnie, banie, ploughman chiel, 
Brings hard owre-hip, wi' sturdy wheel, 

The strong forehammer, 
Till block an* studdie ring an' reel 

Wi' dinsome clamour. 

When skirlin' weanies see the light. 
Thou maks the gossips clatter bright 
How fumblin' cuifs their dearies slight — 

Wae worth the namel 
Nae Howdie gets a social night, 

Or plack frae them. 

When neibors anger at a plea, 
An' just as wud as wud can be, 
How easy can the barley-bree 

Cement the quarrel! 
It's aye the cheapest lawyer's fee 

To taste the barrel. 

Alake! that e'er my Muse has reason 
To wyte her countrymen wi' treason ; 
But mony daily weet their weasan* 

Wi' liquors nice. 
An' hardly, in a winter's season, 

E'er spier her price. 

Wae worth that brandy, burning trash I 
Fell source o' mony a pain an' brash! 
Twins mony a poor, doylt, drucken hash, 

O' half his days; 
An* sends, beside, auld Scotland's cash 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 305 



Ye Scots, wha wish auld Scotland well, 
Ye chief, to you my tale I tell. 
Poor plackless devils like mysel'l 

It sets you ill, 
Wi' bitter, dearth fu' wines to mell, 

Or foreign gill. 



penniless 

becomes 

meddle 



May gravels round his blather wrench, 
An' gouts torment him, inch by inch, 
Wha twists his gruntle wi' a glunch 

O' sour disdain, 
Out owre a glass o' whisky punch 

Wi' honest men I 



bladder 



face, growl 



O Whisky! soul o' plays an' pranks! 
Accept a bardie's gratefu' thanks! 
When wanting thee, what tuneless cranks 

Are my poor verses! 
Thou comes — they rattle i' their ranks 

At ither's arses! 



creakings 



Thee, Ferintoshji O sadly lost! 
Scotland, lament frae coast to coast I 
Now colic-grips an' barkin' hoast 

May kill us a'; 
For loyal Forbes' charter'd boast 

Is ta'en awa! 



cough 



^ Forbes of Culloden was given in 1690 liberty to distil grain at 
Ferintosh without excise. When this privilege was withdrawn in 
1785, the price of whisky rose — hence Burns's lament. 



306 



BURNS 



Those 
stills 



spies 
brimstone 



Thae curst horse-leeches o* th' Excise, 
Wha mak the whisky stells their prize — 
Haud up thy hand, deil ! Ance — twice — thrice I 

There, seize the blinkers ! 
An' bake them up in brunstane pies 

For poor damn'd drinkers. 



Whole breeches, 

oatmeal cake 
plenty 



Fortune! if thou'll but gie me still 
Hale breeks, a bannock, and a gill, 
An' rowth o' rhyme to rave at will, 

Tak' a' the rest. 
An* dealM about as thy blind skill 

Directs thee best. 



TO A HAGGIS 



jolly 

Above 

Paunch, guts 
worthy 



Fair fa' your honest sonsie face, 
Great chieftain o' the puddin'-race ! 
Aboon them a* ye tak your place, 

Painch, tripe, or thairm 
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace 

As lang's my arm. 



buttocks 
skewer 



The groaning trencher there ye fill. 
Your hurdies like a distant hill; 
Your pin wad help to mend a mill 

In time o* need ; 
While thro' your pores the dews distil 

Like amber bead. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 307 



His knife see rustic Labour dight, 
An' cut you up wi' ready sleight, 
Trenching your gushing entrails bright 

Like ony ditch; 
And then, O what a glorious sight, 

Warm-reekin', rich! 

Then, horn for horn they stretch an' strive, 
Deil tak the hindmost ! on they drive, 
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve 

Are bent like drums; 
Then auld guidman, maist like to rive, 

'Be-thankit !' hums. 

Is there that o'er his French ragout. 
Or olio that wad staw a sow, 
Or fricassee wad mak her spew 

Wi' perfect sconner, 
Looks down wi' sneering scornfu' view 

On sic a dinner? 

Poor devil! see him owre his trash, 
As feckless as a wither'd rash, 
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash, 

His nieve a nit : 
Thro' bloody flood or field to dash, 

O how unfit! 

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed— 
The trembling earth resounds his tread ! 
Clap in his walie nieve a blade, 

He'll mak it whissle; 
An' legs, an* arms, an' heads will sned, 

Like taps o' thrissle. 



wipe 
skill 



•smoking 



spoon 



well-swelled bel- 
lies soon 



burst 



sicken 



disgust 



feeble, rush 



fist, nut 



ample fist 

crop 
thistle 



308 



BURNS 



watery stuff 

splashes, por- 
ringers 



Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care, 
And dish them out their bill o' fare, 
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware 

That jaups in luggies; 
But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer, 

Gie her a Haggis! 



A BARD'S EPITAPH 



Too 

bashful, cringe 



Is there a whim-inspired fool, 

Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, 

Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool, 

Let him draw near; 
And owre this grassy heap sing dool. 

And drap a tear. 



Is there a bard of rustic song, 

Who, noteless, steals the crowds among, 

That weekly this area throng, 

O, pass not by! 
But, with a frater-feeling strong, 

Here heave a sigh. 



Is there a man whose judgment clear, 
Can others teach the course to steer, 
Yet runs, himself, life's mad career, 

Wild as the wave; 
Here pause — and, thro' the starting tear. 

Survey this grave. 



DESCRIPTIVE— NARRATIVE 309 

The poor inhabitant below 

Was quick to learn and wise to know. 

And keenly felt the friendly glow, 

And softer flame; 
But thoughtless follies laid him low. 

And stain'd his name! 

Reader, attend! whether thy soul 
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole, 
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole. 

In low pursuit; 
Know prudent, cautious self-control 

Is wisdom's root. 



CHAPTER VI 



CONCLUSION 



WE have now examined in some detail the 
main facts of Burns' s personal life and 
literary production : it is time to sum these up in 
order to realize the character of the man and the 
value of the work. 

Certain fundamental qualities are easily traced 
to his parentage. The Burnses were honest, 
hard-working people, stubborn fighters for inde- 
pendence, with intellectual tastes above the 
average of their class. These characteristics the 
poet inherited. With all his failures in worldly 
affairs, he contrived to pay his debts; however 
obliged to friends and patrons for occasional aid, 
he never abated his self-respect or became the 
hanger-on of any man; and he showed through- 
out his life an eager, receptive, and ever-expand- 
ing mind. The seed sown by his father with so 
much pains and care in his early training fell on 
fruitful soil, and in the range of his information, 
310 



CONCLUSION 311 

as well as in his critical and reasoning powers, 
Burns became the equal of educated men. The 
love of independence, indeed, was less a family 
than a national passion. The salient fact in the 
history of Scotland is the intensity of the pro- 
longed struggle against the political domination 
of England; and there developed in the individ- 
ual life of the Scot a corresponding tendency to 
value personal freedom as the greatest of treas- 
ures. The thrift and economy for which the 
Scottish people are everywhere notable, and which 
has its vicious excess in parsimony and nearness, 
is in its more honorable aspects no end in itself 
but merely a means to independence. If they are 
keen to ''gather gear," 

It's no to hide it in a hedge, 

Nor for a train-attendant, 
But for the glorious privilege 

Of being independent. 

Along with these substantial and admirable 
qualities of integrity and independence Burns in- 
herited certain limitations. In the peasant class 
in which he was born and reared, the fierceness of 
the struggle for existence has crowded out some 
of the more beautiful qualities that need ease and 



312 BURNS 

leisure for their development. The virtues of 
chivalry do indeed at times appear among the 
very poor, but they are the characteristic product 
of a class in which conditions are more generous, 
the necessaries of life are taken for granted, and 
the elemental demands of human nature are satis- 
fied without competitive striving. When a 
peasant is chivalrous he is so by virtue of some in- 
dividual quality, and in spite of rather than be- 
cause of the spirit of his class. Burns was too 
acute and too observant not to gather much from 
the social ideals of the ladies and gentlemen with 
whom he came in contact, and what he gathered 
affected his conduct profoundly; but at times 
under stress of frustrated passion or mortified 
vanity he reverted to the ruder manners of the 
peasantry from which he sprang. So have to be 
accounted for certain brutalities in his treatment 
of the women who loved him or who had been 
unwise enough to yield to his fascination. 

Other characteristics belong to him individ- 
ually rather than to his family or class or nation. 
He was to an extraordinary degree proud and 
sensitive. He reacted warmly to kindness, and 
showed his gratitude without stint; but he al- 



CONCLUSION 313 

lowed no man to presume upon the obligations 
he had conferred. He was very conscious of dif- 
ference of rank, and never sought to ignore it, 
however little he thought it mattered in com- 
parison with intrinsic merit. But the very de- 
gree to which he was aware of the social gap be- 
tween him and many of his acquaintances put him 
ever on the alert for slights; and when he per- 
ceived or imagined that he had received them, 
his indignation was sometimes less than dignified 
and often excessive. Though he knew that he 
possessed uncommon gifts, he was essentially 
modest in fact as well as in appearance, and on 
the whole underestimated his genius. 

He had a warm heart, and in his relations with 
his equals he was genial and friendly. His love 
of his kind manifested itself especially in his de- 
light in company, a delight naturally heightened 
by the enjoyment of the sense of leadership which 
his superior wit and brilliance gave him in almost 
any society. The customs of the time associated 
to an unfortunate degree hard drinking with so- 
cial intercourse. But more than the whisky he 
enjoyed the loosening of self-consciousness and 
the warmth of conviviality that it brought. 



314 BURNS 

not that It's no I like to sit an' swallow, 

Then like a swine to puke an' wallow ; 
give But gie me just a true guid fellow 

wit Wi' right ingine, 

liquor enough And spunkie ance to mak us mellow, 

An' then we'll shine ! 

Burns was not a drunkard. He seems to have 
taken little alone, and in the houses of some of 
his more fashionable friends he resented the pres- 
sure to drink more than he wanted. Nor did he 
allow dissipation to interfere with his work on 
the farm, or his duties in the excise. Yet, even 
when contemporary manners have received their 
share of responsibility, it must be allowed that 
on the poet's own confession he drank frequently 
to excess, and that this abuse had a serious share 
in the breakdown of his constitution, weakened 
as it was by the excessive toil of his youth. 

He was fond of women, and this passion more 
than any other has been the center of the disputes 
that have raged round his life and character. 
Again, contemporary and class customs have to 
be taken into account. In spite of the formal 
disapproval of public opinion and the censure of 
the church, the attitude of his class in the end 
of the eighteenth century toward such irregulari- 



CONCLUSION 315 

ties as brought Burns and Jean Armour to the 
stool of repentance was much less severe than it 
would be in this country to-day. Burns himself 
knew he was culpable, but the comparative lax- 
ity of the standards of the time made it easier 
for him to forgive himself, and prompted him to 
defiance when he believed himself criticized by 
puritan hypocrites. Thus in his utterances we 
have a curious inconsistency, his feeling ranging 
from black remorse and melancholy, through 
half-hearted excuse and justification, to swagger- 
ing bravado. And none of them makes pleasant 
reading. 

But his relations with the other sex were not 
all of the nature of sheer passion. He was ca- 
pable of serious friendship, warm respect, abject 
a'doration, and a hundred other variations of feel- 
ing; and in several cases he maintained for years, 
by correspondence and occasional visits, an inter- 
course with ladies on which no shadow of a stain 
has ever been cast. Such were his relations with 
Margaret Chalmers and Mrs. Dunlop. These 
facts have no controversial bearing, but they are 
necessary to be considered if we are to have a 
complete view of Burns's relations to society. 

In estimating him as a poet, nothing is lost in 



316 BURNS 

keeping in mind the historical relations which 
have been so strongly emphasized in recent years. 
He himself would have been the last to resent be- 
ing placed in a national tradition, but, on the 
contrary, would have been proud to be regarded 
as the last and greatest of Scottish vernacular 
poets. Patriotic feeling is frequent in his verse; 
we have seen how consciously he performed his 
work for Johnson and Thomson as a service to 
his country; and to the "Guidwife of Wauchope 
House" he professed, speaking of his youth, 

E'en then, a wish (I mind its pow'r), 
A wish that from my latest hour 

Shall strongly heave my breast, 
That I for poor aiild Scotland's sake 
Some usefu' plan or book could make, 

Or sing a sang at least. 

So in the line of the Scottish "makers" we place 
him, the inheritor of the speech of Henryson and 
Dunbar, of the meters and modes of Montgom- 
ery and the Sempills, Ramsay and Fergusson, 
the re-creator of the perishing rehcs of the lost 
masters of popular song. 

His relation to his English predecessors need 
not again be detailed, so little of value did they 
contribute to the vital part of his work. But 



CONCLUSION 317 

some account should be taken of his connection 
with the EngHsh Hterature of his own and the 
next generation. 

The humanitarian movement was well under 
way before the appearance of Burns, and the par- 
ticular manifestations of it in, for example, the 
poems of Cowper on -animals, owed nothing to the 
Influence of Burns. But Cowper's hares never 
appealed to the popular heart with the force of 
Burns's sheep and mice and dogs, and the tender 
familiarity and wistful jocoseness of his poems 
to beasts have never been surpassed. In writing 
these he was probably, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, affected by the tendency of the time, as 
he was also in the democratic brotherhood of 
A Man's a Man for a' That, but, in both cases, as 
we have seen, part of the impulse, that part that 
made his utterance reach his audience, was de- 
rived from his personal intercourse with his farm 
stock and from his inborn conviction of the dig- 
nity of the individual. His relations to these 
elements in the thought and feeling of his day 
were, then, reciprocal: they strengthened certain 
traits in his personality, and he passed them on to 
posterity, strengthened in turn by his moving 
expression. 



318 BURNS 

The situation is similar with regard to his con- 
nection with the so-called "return to nature" in 
English poetry. Historians have discerned a new 
era begun in descriptive poetry with Thomson's 
Seasons; and in Cowper again, to ignore many 
intermediates, there is abundance of faithful 
portraiture of landscape. But Burns was not 
given to set description of their kind, and what 
he has in common with them lies in the nature 
of his detail — the frank actuality of the images 
of wind and weather, burn and brae, which form 
the background of his human comedy and 
tragedy. He observed for himself, and he called 
things by their own names. In so doing he was 
once more following a national tradition, so that 
he was not "returning" to nature, since the tradi- 
tion had never left it; but, on the other hand, it 
is reasonable to suppose that Wordsworth, ar- 
riving at a somewhat similar method by a totally 
different route, found corroboration for his 
theories of the simplification needed in the mat- 
ter and diction of poetry in the success of the 
Scottish rustic who showed his youth 

How Verse may build a princely throne 
On humble truth. 



CONCLUSION 319 

Wordsworth, of course, like the most distin- 
guished of his romantic contemporaries, found 
much in nature that Burns never dreamed of; 
and even the faithfulness in detail which Burns 
shared with these poets reached a point of subtlety 
and sensuousness far beyond the reach of his 
simple and direct epithets. Nature was to be 
given in the next generation a vast and novel va- 
riety of spiritual significance. With all that 
Burns had nothing to do. He was realist, not ro- 
manticist, though his example operated benefi- 
cently and sanely on some of the romantic lead- 
ers. 

Yet in Burns's treatment of nature there is 
imaginative beauty as well as humble truth. His 
language in description, though not mystical or 
highly idealized, is often rich in feeling, and his 
personality was potent enough to pervade his most 
objective writing. Thus he ranks among those 
who have put lovers of poetry under obligation 
for a fresh glimpse of the beauty and meaning of 
the world around them. This glimpse is so 
strongly suggestive of the poet that our delight 
in it will largely depend on our sympathy with 
his temperament; yet now and again he flashes 
out a phrase whose imaginative value is absolute, 



320 BURNS 

and which makes its appeal without respect to 
the author : 

The wan moon is setting behind the white wave, 
And time is setting with me, oh ! 

Apart from the respects in which Burns is 
the inheritor and perfecter of the vernacular tra- 
ditions, and apart from his contact, active or pas- 
sive, with the English poets of his time, there is 
much in his poetry which is thoroughly his own. 
It does not lie mainly in his thinking, robust and 
shrewd though that is. We perceive in his work 
no great individual attitude toward life and so- 
ciety such as we are impelled to perceive in the 
work of Goethe; we find no message in it like 
the message of Browning. What he does is to 
bring before us characters, situations, moods, 
images, that belong to the permanent and ele- 
mental in our nature. These are presented with 
a sympathy so living, a tenderness so poignant, 
a humor so arch and so sly, that they become a 
part of our experience in the most delightful and 
exhilarating fashion. Part of the function of 
poetry is to prevent us from becoming sluggish 
in our contemplation of life by making us feel it 
fresh, vivid, pulsing; and this Burns notably ac- 



CONCLUSION 321 

complishes. Coleridge's image of wetting the 
pebble to bring out its color and brilliance is pe- 
culiarly apt in the case of Burns; for it was the 
common if not the commonplace that he dealt 
with, and his workmanship made it sparkle like 
a jewel. 

In the long run the value of an author depends 
on two factors, the nature of his insight and hi^ 
power of expression. Burns's insight into his 
own nature was deep and on the whole just, and 
that nature was itself rich enough to teach him 
much. He found there the great struggle be- 
tween impulse and will — fiery, surging impulse 
and a stubborn will. This experience, illuminated 
by a lively imagination, gave him a sympathetic 
understanding of extraordinary range, extending 
from the domestic troubles of the royal family 
and the perplexities of the prime minister to the 
precarious adventures of a louse. His insight 
into external nature blended the weather wisdom 
of the ploughman with the poet's sensitiveness 
to the harmony or discord of wind and sky with 
the moods of humanity. 

For the expression of all this he had an in- 
strument that did not reach, it is true, to the 
great tragic tones of Shakespeare nor to the deli- 



322 BURNS 

cate and filmy subtleties of Shelley. But he could 
utter pathos almost intolerably piercing, and over- 
whelming remorse; gaiety as fresh and inspirit- 
ing as the song of a lark; roistering mirth; keen 
irony; and a thousand phases of passion. This 
he did in a verse of amazing variety — sometimes 
tender and caressing; sometimes rushing like a 
torrent. 

Finally, it must be insisted again, in that 
aspect in which he is most nearly supreme, the 
writing of songs, he is musician as well as poet. 
Though he made no tunes, he saved hundreds; 
saved them not merely for the antiquary and the 
connoisseur but for the great mass of lovers of 
sweet and simple melody; saved them by marry- 
ing them to fit and immortal words. It is for 
this most of all that Scotland and the world love 
Bums. 



THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX 



A Man's a Man for a' That, quoted 158. 317. 

A Red, Red Rose, 101, quoted 102. 

Address to the Deil, 38, 86, 281, quoted 282. 

Address to the Unco Guid, 38, quoted 176, 189. 

Adventures of Telemachus, 17. 

Ae Fond Kiss, quoted 56-57, 75, 103. 

Mneid (Douglas's), 268. 

Afton Water, quoted 116. 

Ainslie, Robert, 50. 

Alloway, 4 ff. 

Animals, Burns's feeling for, 270, 271. 

Armour, James, 35. 37-39. 

Armour, Jean, 35-39, 50, 55, 93, 110, 122, 172. 

Arnold, Matthew, 206, 237. 

Auld Lang Syne, 98, quoted 100. 

Auld Lichts, 179, 180, 184, 188. 

Auld Rob Morris, 115, quoted 121. 

Bachelor's Club, 22. 

Bannocks o' Barley, quoted 165. 

Bard's Epitaph, A, 294, quoted 308. 

Beattie, 86. 

Beethoven, 95. 

Begbie, Ellison, 22-23, 27, 110. 

Bessy and Her Spinnin' -Wheel, quoted 145. 

Biography, Ofificial, 68. 

Blacklock, Doctor, 39. 

Blair, Doctor, 45, 86. 

Blair Athole, 51. 

Boar's Head Tavern, 240. 

Bonnie Lesley, 115, quoted 118. 

Braw Braw Lads, quoted 140. 

Brow-on-SoIway, 67. 

Browning, 320. 

Burnes, William, 3-8. 

Burns, Agnes (Brown), 4, 8. 

Burns, Gilbert, 5-6, 15, 31, 59, 90. 

Burns, Robert, his career: autobiographical letter, 1-2; 

parentage and early life, 3-23; schooling, 5-8. 15, 17; 

reading, 6-8, 18-19; study of French, 16; folk-lore, 

325 



326 INDEX 



18; overwork, 19; first song, 20; flax-dressing, 23; 
early love-affairs, 22, 27; Mossgiel, 31-44; Elizabeth 
Paton, 32-35; Jean Armour, 35-36; Mary Campbell 
(Highland Mary), 36-37; West Indian project, 37- 
39; Elizabeth Miller, TH ', Kilmarnock edition, 37-38; 
disciplined by the church, 38-39; Edinburgh, 44-56; 
early reviews, 46; Edinburgh edition, 46-50; south- 
ern tour, 50; Highland tours, 50-51; Mrs. McLehose, 
52-58; marriage, 55; ElHsland, 58-62; Excise, 61-65; 
Dumfries, 62-68; politics, 63-65; work for Johnson 
and Thomson, 65-66, 91-98; whisky, 66-67, 313; ill- 
ness and death, 66-67. 

Burns and music, 9 ff. 

Burns's method of composition, 87, 92, 111-112. 

Burns's stanza, 80. 



Ca' the Yowes, quoted 115. 

Campbell, Mary, 36-37, 76, 112. See Highland Mary. 

Canterbury Tales, 254, 

Chalmers, Margaret, 110. 

Charlie He's My Darling, quoted 168. 

Chaucer, 254. 

Chloris (Jean Lorimer), 110, 112. 

Choice Collection (Watson's), 81. 

Clarinda (Mrs. McLehose), 52-58. 

Clarinda, quoted 58, 75, 109. 

Cockburn, Mrs., 82. 

Coleridge, 321. 

Come Boat Me O'er to Charlie, quoted 163. 

Comin' through the Rye, quoted 154. 

Complete Letter-Writer, 6. 

Contented wi' Little, quoted 126. 

Conviviality, 66, 313. 

Corn Rigs, 75. 

Cowper, 267, 317. 

Crabbe, 267. 

Craigieburn-wood, 111. 

Creech, 45, 50, 52. 

Currie, Doctor, 68. 



Dalrymple, James, 44. 

Dalrymple School, 15. 

Davidson, Betty, 18. 

Death and Doctor Hornbook, quoted 287. 

'Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie, 80, 82. 

Dedication to Gavin Hamilton, 185-186. 

Descriptive poetry, 206 ff., 264 ff. 



INDEX 327 



Dick, J. C, 91-92, note. 
Dodsley, Robert, 103. 
Douglas, Gavin, 268. 
Dramatic lyrics, 128 ff. 
Drummond of Hawthornden, 12, 
Dumfries, 50, 62-68. 
Dunbar, William, 81. 241, 316. 
Duncan Davison, quoted 153. 
Duncan Gray, quoted 152. 
Dunlop, Mrs. 110. 

Edinburgh, Burns in, 44-56. 

Edinburgh Magazine, 46. 

Elegies, 294 ff. 

Elegy on Capt. Matthew Henderson, quoted 298. 

Ellisland, 58-62. 

English poems of Burns, 73 ff. 

Epigrams, 204, 205. 

Epistle to a Young Friend, 199, quoted 200. 

Epistle to Davie, 79, quoted 193, 267. 

Epistle to James Smith, 190, 191. 

Epistle to John Goldie, 179. 

Epistle to John Rankine, ZZ. 

Epistle to McMath, 181. 

Epistle to William Simpson, 270. 

Epistles, 38, 190 ff . 

Epitaphs, 204, 205. 

Erskine, Hon. Henry, 45. 

Excise service, 59, 61-65. 

Farmer's Ingle, 84. 

Ferguson, Dr. Adam, 46. 

Fergusson, Robert, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 316. 

Fisher, William, 173. 

Flax-dressing experiment, 23. 

Flint, Christina, 93. 

For the Sake o' Somebody, quoted 136. 

Freemasons, 46. 

French Revolution, 63-64. 

From thee, Eliza, I must go, 37. 

Gaelic, 69. 

Gibson, Nancy, 239. 

Glencairn, Lord, 45, 49. 

Glenriddel Manuscript, 60. 

Go Fetch to me a Pint o' Wine, quoted 88. 

Goethe, 320. 

Goldsmith, 86. 



328 INDEX 



Gordon, Duchess of, 45, 48. 

Graham of Fintry, 64. 

Gray, 86. 

Green Grow the Rashes, quoted 123. 

Grose, Captain, 253. 

Had I the Wytcf, quoted 148. 

Halloween, Z^, 208, quoted 209, 217, 218, 228, 270, 282. 

Hamilton, Gavin, 38, 172, 185. 

Hamilton of Gilbertfield, 81, 82. 

Handsome Nell: quoted 20; criticized by Burns, 21-22, 

103. 
Happy Beggars, 238. 
Haydn, 95. 

Henderson, Captain Matthew, 294. 
Henryson, Robert. 78, 81. 272, 316. 
Heroic couplet in Burns, 268, 269. 
Highland Mary, quoted 113-116. 
Highland Mary, 36-37, 76, 110. 
History of the Bible, 6. 
Hogg, James, 162. 

Holy Willie's Prayer, 38, quoted 173. 
How Lang and Dreary, quoted 138. 
Humble Petition of Bruar Water, 51. 
Hume, David, 44. 

/ Gaed a Waefu' Gate, quoted 117. 

/ Hae a Wife, quoted 59, 103. 

J Hae Been at Crookieden, quoted 167. 

I'm Owrc Young to Marry Yet, quoted 143. 

Independence, Scottish love of, 311. 

Irvine, 23. 

It Was a' for our Rightfu' King, quoted 162. 

Jacobite Songs, 161 ff. 

Jacobitism, 63. 

John Anderson, my Jo, 145, quoted 146. 

Johnson, James, 65, 91, 94, 97, 98, 316. 

Kenmure's On and Awa, quoted 165. 
Kilmarnock Edition, 37-39. 
Kilpatrick, Nelly. 20, 22, 110. 
Kirk of Scotland, Opposition to, 171. 
Kirkoswald, 17, 254. 
Kirkyard Eclogues, 84. 
Knox, John, 71. 
Kozeluch, 95. 



INDEX 329 



La Fontaine, 272. 

Laddie Lie Near Me, 92. 

Lament for the Earl of Glencairn, 49. 

Language of Burns, 69 ff. 

Lassie wi' the Lint-white Locks, quoted 119. 

Last Dying Words of Bonny Heck, 82. 

Last May a Braw Wooer, quoted 135. 

Last Speech of a Wretched Miser, 83. 

Leith Races, 84. 

Lewars, Jessie, 110, 122, 

Lindesay, Sir David, 71. 

Lindsay, Lady Anne, 82. 

Lochlea, 5 ff. 

London Monthly Review, 46. 

Lorimer, Jean (Chloris), 110, 111, 

Lounger, The, 46. 

Lowland Scots, 69 ff. 

Lucky S pence's Last Advice, 82. 

Mackenzie, Henry, 19, 45, 46, 86. 
Macpherson's Farezvell, quoted 150. 
McGill, Doctor, 186. 
McLehose, Mrs., 52-58. 
Mary Morison, quoted 28. 
Mauchline, 31, 50. 
Merry Beggars, 238. 
Miller, Elizabeth, ?,7. 
Milton, 85. 

Montgomerie's Peggy, quoted 120. 
-Montgomery, Alexander, 79, 316. 
Moore, Dr. John : 5 ; letter to, 1-2, 18, 83. 
Mossgiel, 31-44. 
Mount Oliphant, 4-5. 
Murdoch, John, 5, 15-17, 90-91. 
Murray, Sir William, 51. 
Muse, jocular treatment of his, 203 ff. 
Music, Burns's knowledge of, 90 ff. 
Music and song, 169-170, 322. 
My Father zvas a Farmer, quoted 126. 
My Heart's in the Highlands, quoted 140. 
My Love She's but a Lassie Yet, 141, quoted 144. 
My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose, 101, quoted 102„ 
M-v Nannie's Awa, quoted 57-58, 75, 103, 266. 
My Nannie O, quoted 29-30, 103. 
My Wife's a Winsome Wee Thing, quoted 108. 

Nairne, Lady, 162. 
Nature in Burns, 318. 
New Lichts, 179, 188. 
Nicol, William, 50, 52. 



330 INDEX 



O, For Ane an' Twenty, Tarn! quoted 129. 

O Merry Hae I Been, quoted 148. 

O This is No my Ain Lassie, quoted 107. 

O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast, 122, quoted 123. 

Of a' the Airts, quoted 106. 

On a Scotch Bard, Gone to the West Indies, quoted, 42-44. 

On Seeing a Wounded Hare, 86. 

Open the Door to me, O! quoted 137. 

Park, Anne, 110. 

Paton, Elizabeth, 32. 

Peasant characteristics of Burns, 311, 312. 

Percy, Bishop, 81. 

Planestanes and Causey, 84. 

Pleyel, 95. 

Pontics, 63-65. 

Poor Mailie's Elegy, quoted 26-27. 

Poortith Cauld, 106, quoted 107. 

Poosie Nansie, 239. 

Pope, 86, 269. 

Practical Essay on the Death of Jesus Christ, 186. 

Prayer in the Prospect of Death, quoted 32. 

Ramsay, Allan, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 99, 103, 238, 316. 

Ramsay of Ochtertyre, 51. 

Realism, 267. 

Reformation, influence of, 95 ff. 

Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 81. 

Richmond, 44. 

Riddel, Col. Robert, 60. 

Satires and Epistles, 171 ff. 

Scenery in Burns, 265 ff. 

Scotch Drink, 38, 84, 294, quoted 301. 

Scots Musical Museum, 65, 95, 97. 

Scots, Wha Hae, quoted 160. 

Scott, Alexander, 79. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 44, 46-48, 161-162. 

Scottish Dialect, 69 ff. 

Scottish Folk-song, 96 ff. 

Scottish Literature, 78 ff. 

Scottish Song, 90 ff. 

Sea in Scottish poetry, 264-265. 

Seasons, 318. 

Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, 95. 

SempiUs, 79, 80, 294, 316. 

Shaftesbury, 193. 

Shakespeare, 85, 321. 



INDEX 331 



Shelley, 322. 

Shenstone, 86. 

Sibbald, James, 46. 

Simmer's a Pleasant Time, quoted 131. 

Smith, Adam, 44. 

Sterne, 86, 270. 

Stewart, Dugald, 45. 

Stirling, Alexander, Earl of, 72. 

Stuart-Menteath, Sir James, 93. 

Tarn Glen, quoted 133. 

Tarn o' Shanter, 253-257, quoted 257, 266, 268, 282. 

Tam Samson's Elegy, quoted 294. 

Tea Table Miscellany, 81, 99. 

The Auld Farmer's New-Year Morning Salutation, quoted 

278. 
The Banks of Helicon, 79. 
The Blue-eyed Lassie, quoted 117. 
The Bonnie Lad that's Far Awa, quoted 139. 
The Brigs of Ayr, 267. 
The Cherry and the Slae, 79. 
The Cotter's Saturday Night, quoted 8-15, 38, 74, 84, 190, 

criticized 207 ff., 219, 266. 
The Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie, quoted 23-25. 
The Deil's Awa wi' th' Exciseman, quoted 154. 
The Deuk's Dang o'er my Daddie, quoted 155. 
The Gazetteer, 64. 
The Gentle Shepherd, 82. 
The Gloomy Night, quoted 40-41, 103. 
The Highland Balou, 150, quoted 151. 
The Highland Laddie, quoted 164. 
The Holy Fair, 38, 84, 227, quoted 228. 
The Jolly Beggars, 38, 77, 238-241, quoted 241, 266. 
The Kirk's Alarm, 186, 187. 
The Lass of Ccssnock Banks, 23. 
The Lea-Rig, quoted 120. 
The Man of Feeling, 86. 
The Ordination 184, 185. 
The Piper of Kilharchan, 79. 
The Poet's Welcome to his Love-begotten Daughter, (\VioXt6. 

33-35. 
The Rantin' Dog the Daddie o't, quoted 134. 
The Rigs o' Barley, quoted 30, 103. 
The Twa Dogs, 4, 38, 84, quoted 219. 
The Twa Herds, 180. 
The Vision, 38. 

The Weary Fund o' Tow, quoted 147. 
There'll Never be Peace, quoted 166. 



332 INDEX 



There was a Lad, quoted 125. 

Thomson, George, 65, 88, 91, 92, 95, 98, 169, 316. 

Thomson, James, 86, 318. 

To a Haggis, 294, quoted 306. 

To a Louse, 38, quoted 274. 

To a Mountain Daisy, 38, 86, 190, quoted 276. 

To a Mouse, 38, 86, 190, quoted 272. 

To Daunt on Me, quoted 142. 

To Mary in Heaven, 76, quoted 114. 

To the Deil, 38, 86, 281, quoted 282. 

To the Guidwife of Wauchope House, 316. 

To the Rev. John McMath, quoted 181. 

To the Unco Guid, 38, quoted 176, 189. 

Wallace, History of Sir William, 19. 

Wandering Willie, quoted 138. 

Watson, James, 81. 

West Indies, 37-39. 

Wha is that at my Bower Door?, quoted 156. 

What Can a Young Lassie, quoted 142. 

Whistle and I'll Come to Thee, my Lad, 75, quoted 132o 

Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary, Z7, quoted 40, 103. 

Willie Brew'd a Peck o' Maut, 237, quoted 238. 

Willie's Wife, quoted 156. 

Wilson, John (Dr. Hornbook), 287. 

Winter, a Dirge, 266. 

Winter Night, A, 271. 

Women, Burns and, 314, 315. 

Wordsworth, 318, 319. 

Ye Banks and Braes, quoted 130, 131. 

Yestreen I had a Pint o' Wine, quoted 104-105, 110. 

Young, Dr., S6. 



3it77-l 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce; 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2009 

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